


try to fix what's broken

by ifntae



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Side Dojae, mention and use of drugs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8523826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifntae/pseuds/ifntae
Summary: In which Ten's demons destroyed them, but Johnny knows it's not too late to piece it all together again.





	1. after the storm pt.1

   

 

        The sky is bright, maybe too bright; yet Johnny is not able to take off his eyes of it. Not until a hand lays on his arm, telling him to turn around. But it takes Johnny a few shakes before actually doing it. He just loves the sky in the summer, when its all blue, and there's not a single cloud on it. He doesn't know the actual reason of this, but it has always been his thing. He figures it's maybe because it's the only thing he can see that his family, back in Chicago, sees too. The sky is the same, here and there, and he loves the clear weather, but there's something he loves even more.  
  
        "Look at me" the voice besides him say, and it's not an angry tone, but a childish one. He finally does, he turns around.  
  
        And there he is, the thing, or, well, the person he loves even more. Above the clean sky, above the coffee, above Chicago and even above singing (though he wouldn't admit it if someone asks him.) He smiles, seeing the pout his boyfriend is making.  
  
        "You never pay attention to me when we're in the roof." Ten whines, and Johnny can't stop himself from laughing before passing an arm behind the younger's shoulders and bringing him near. Ten was already too near, but he is now between Johnny's chest and the railing. Johnny covers Ten's hands with his own, and stares at the sky again. It's getting pink with the sunset coming near, and he just stares.  
  
        He comes here too often, every time he has a chance to, and he brings Ten along when he can, even if it's not the same as watching it on his own. He loves Ten, very much, but sometimes he just needs a moment for himself, some quiet. Ten understands this, nevertheless. This is why he doesn't ask anything and shuts his mouth between Johnny's arm, looking at the sunset too and trying to control his cheeks from getting more red than they already are. He lies his chin on top of their hands and Johnny rests his head on top of Ten's head, getting the smell of his shampoo, yet still looking afar.  
  
        It's perfect, too perfect, and he doesn't want this moment to end. He never does. Even if he has seen this a lot of times, it has never been enough. People normally take things for granted, things that are in their daily lives and they don't focus on for at least a moment. This is why he likes to give a moment to the sunset. It happens every day, and it's a beautiful view, yet he reckons not a lot of people take a break of 5 minutes to admire it. It's a pity.  
  
        "I love you" he whispers on Ten's ear. It's not the first time he says it, but it always makes Ten blush like it was.  
  
        "I love you too" Ten answers in a whisper too, loud enough for both of them to hear, and makes sure to intertwined their hands.  
  
        The sun finally goes away, and so is Johnny's perfect moment.

 

* * *

  
         _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ , Johnny complains in a whisper. _Not this dream again._  
  
        He takes the pillow under his head to cover his face, his red face. He has been having this dream way too many times these days, and it just leaves him a sour feeling when he wakes up, realizing yet again that things aren't the same. He throws the pillow to the ground when he hears a groan besides him, and a hand comes from under the sheets to care his chest for a moment.  
  
        "Turn off the alarm" Johnny hears, and he does as told. He sits on his side of the bed, looking at the ground and full of questions no one can answer. Why is he having that dream again? Why now? _It'll go away with a cold shower_ , he thinks to himself. _I just need a cold shower._  
  
        5 seconds into the cold shower, Johnny figures he maybe doesn't really need a cold shower.  
  
        He feels the hot water go down his back, somehow soothing the tension he didn't even know he had.  
  
        It takes him no time to get dressed and grab a banana on his way out of the apartment. He sees his boyfriend still laying on the bed, waiting for the second alarm to sound. He normally sticks around, bothering him before leaving, maybe even having breakfast together with his favorite cereal. But he doesn't feel like doing it today, not after that dream. It made him remember of those times, and it's just not the same.

        He puts on his shoes quietly, gives a quick glance back at the bedroom and goes out trying to make no sounds shutting the door.

 

* * *

  
  
        Ten wakes up at the sound of the closing door. He lifts up his head, looks at the clock and smiles at the thought of having 13 more minutes to sleep. He rests his head against the pillow, but now all he does is remember his dream. There's no one besides him, as always. He wakes up alone, even if the other side of the bed is still warm with his boyfriend's scent impregnated on it.  
  
        But he can't fall asleep now, for some odd reason. He looks and thinks about nothing those thirteen minutes and rolls around to his boyfriend's side of the bed when the alarm finally turns on. But before his hand presses the button to turn it off, he listens to the melody.  
  
        People normally has a strong, loud and annoying sound for alarms, it's the best way to really wake you up. But for Ten, weirdly, it's not. He has tried several annoying sounds as an alarm before, but none of those actually worked for him. He still slept like a baby, not budging, not even a little. Then, one day (or one night to be exact), Johnny had an idea.  
  
         _Use a sweet, calm melody_ , he said, _maybe something of Yiruma_. It sounded stupid at first. How was Yiruma going to wake him up? Maybe Johnny had too many drinks that night, it even took him a few times to actually get the right words for Ten to understand, mixing English and Korean. He did it, though. No matter how stupid it sounded and no matter if it was only a drunken idea, he still gave it a try; and when he woke up the next day with Yiruma's Kiss The Rain resonating in the room, he couldn't believe it. Not even Johnny, who was lying besides him with a huge smirk on his face. It had a good repercussion on Ten's life at last. He started to wake up with more energy (which is amazing since he already had too much even if he slept a few hours) and ended choreos sooner than before. He remembers coming back home with a huge grin on his face and rewarding Johnny that night for such an amazing idea.  
  
        Ten smiles at the thought, longing the memory where he and Johnny woke up together full of smiles, but it fades away as soon as he realizes he's smiling. Why is he thinking about this? He sighs, it's not like it's the first time he remembers it. But... things aren't the same. He knows. Johnny knows. Things haven't been the same in a while, even if they tried to be okay with each other.  
  
        He stares at the bathroom, where there's a lot of water splashed everywhere. He sighs, taking his phone to scold his boyfriend in a text. He types in seconds, and before he could press 'send', he regrets it. He erases the text and sends a different one to a different person, and throws the phone to the bed. He doesn't want problems with him today.

 

* * *

  
        Johnny arrives first at the building, like always. He greets the guard before unlocking the door and turning on the lights. He unlocks every personal singing room, puts water on the coffee machines and leaves it working while he checks the papers he left on his desk the night before. There are a few things he needs to check on asap, but he's not too worried. He always has time for everything.  
  
        He quickly leaves his office and gets himself a cup of coffee when Doyoung arrives.  
  
        "Wassuuuuuupp" Doyoung screams while walking up to his boss, and Johnny frowns before giving a quick glance at the younger. It's odd for him to be so... loud, even more at this time of the day.  
  
        "Are you drunk?" Johnny asks, smelling him and getting his answer right away.  
  
        "Maybe a little," Doyoung answers with a grin before signing Johnny to get near, "I didn't go home last night" he whispers and giggles.  
  
        Johnny is envious, but he doesn't let himself show it. "I can see that" He states, and before he gives a sip to his coffee, he hands it to Doyoung "here, you need it more than I do"  
  
        Doyoung takes a sip and tries to take the stupid smile off of his face, slapping himself a few times. Johnny is perplexed at such weird scene, and Doyoung's cheeks get even more red after a few slaps.  
  
        "Hyung," he whines. Johnny takes another mug to fill. "Have you been in love?"  
  
        Johnny's heart skip a beat and he doesn't understand why. He sighs. Why are there a lot of things that he's not getting today? He nods without looking though, preoccupied his voice comes out as unstable as his heart.  
  
        "Are you in love now?" Doyoung asks, resting his elbow against the counter.  
  
        "Yeah," Johnny answers quickly, still not looking at the younger but instead to his own mug. Are his eyes going to betray him too? "Of course"  
  
        "You don't sound in love" Doyoung giggles.  
  
        "And you don't sound like you can give lessons in this state, go home first, take a shower and a hangover pill before coming back." Johnny moves Doyoung's elbow off the counter and pushes him towards the entrance door. Doyoung lets himself get pushed until he reaches the door, and turns around, no smile on his face now.  
  
        "You used to sound in love, hyung" Doyoung confesses, and leaves.  
  
        "I know.." Johnny answers in a whisper, loud enough for himself to hear, and he sighs, giving himself the chance to think for a mere moment of the dream he had just this morning. He hears Doyoung singing Drake's Hotline Bling outside and a quick smile appears. He hasn't been smiling as much these days.  
  
        He looks at his watch, and goes back to his office, finally giving the proper attention to the sheets on his desk. They must be enough to make him think in something else, he hopes, they need to be enough.

 

* * *

  
        Ten shrugs, watching the Seoul people come and go in the subway station. He's calm though, sitting on a bench and sipping on his tea as he watch them run around worried to not arrive late. Ten is already going late to meet Jaehyun, but it's odd for him not to be late.  
  
        He's an optimistic, or so he tries to be. He never sees the glass half empty and he's never too worried about things, always trusting the future will do its work. _You can't always think like that,_ he hears a certain voice in his head, and founds a sad smile slipping away on his face. He presses the cup against his lips.  
  
        It's an odd morning for him. Nothing has really been different but he knows it will be soon, or so he hopes, cause the shivers he gets every time he thinks about the dream are not really soothing. That is why he's sitting in the subway, just, admiring everything, waiting for something to happen. He learned from Johnny that everything doesn't stay as it is, and he should enjoy it while he still can.  
  
        The subway arrives, and people squeeze up to get inside. Ten looks at the picture, amazed, cause apparently all of them do, leaving the station with only a few people left. It's not chaotic anymore, the only sound now is the janitor, sweeping away the dirty everyone else left.  
  
        Ten sighs heavily, this is what he was waiting for. The calm after the storm.

* * *

  
        By the time Johnny finishes up his paper work, a large part of the staff and trainees have arrived to start their normal routine. He still has a lot of things to do, like checking on group A of trainees -because it was Friday, and he wanted to monitor them weekly-, like finishing up the auditions for a new batch of trainees, like having a meeting with the styling team and checking on the tentative budget, and like hearing Doyoung out, who was now peeking his eyes through the glass door.  
  
        "Come in" Johnny says, and Doyoung gets startled to be noticed and bangs his forehead against the door by accident. "I can see you through, you know" Doyoung opens the door while pouting, and he looks apologetic in an instant. He has different clothes and his orange-ish hair is still a bit wet.  
  
        "Sorry for earlier," He answers, trying not to see Johnny directly at his eyes. He wonders when has Doyoung started to fear him, he wonders if the sober Doyoung would've said to him the same things that drunk Doyoung said a few hours ago, but he's too afraid for the answer, so he let it pass. "I didn't mean to say what I said..."  
  
        "It's okay" Johnny answers.  
  
        "Or break your favorite mug on the way out.." Doyoung whispers, but it's loud enough for Johnny to hear.  
  
        "What?!" He wants to stand up and give him a smack, but his heart gets soft the moment Doyoung tries to cover his head with his arms. He laughs, ignoring the fact that Ten gifted him that mug. "It's okay" Doyoung smiles, it's a little one, but Johnny feels a little warm on the inside by just that. "Why did you come?"  
  
        "Oh" Doyoung mutters, forgetting for a moment the real reason of his visit and drifting his eyes away. Doyoung really liked Johnny's office. Somehow, it showed Johnny's self completely. It had a poster of the Chicago Bears hanging on one of the walls, another one with a broccoli and a caption 'Super Broccoli' (he never understood that one) on the opposite side with his college degree besides it, and a painting of a sunset on the wall behind him. He had a few pictures in his desk, and Doyoung reckoned it was his family, though he couldn't see from where he was sitting. It was a weird combination, all that mixed up with a scent of coffee coming from another little coffee machine that was exclusively for Johnny -Doyoung wondered if it'd taste like gold, probably not but his imagination always got the best of him-. "the trainees are waiting for you" Doyoung says, now with a serious tone.  
  
        He knew Johnny back from college, they were both in the music department; and even though he doesn't remember having much memories talking with the older, he knew from different acquaintances that Johnny was a hardworking sunbae, not only looking to be a singer but a CEO too, with his own music company. Everyone had big dreams at a time, they all hoped glory as soon as they went out, and even though only a few of them got it (like Taeil or Seulgi as singer), others had to get used to the idea that maybe something smaller was the best they could do, like Doyoung and Hansol did, by being instructors. But only one really fulfilled his college dream: and that person is the one sitting across the desk.  
  
        Doyoung is grateful for so many things, and most of them are because of Johnny. Doyoung was having a bad season after finishing college, he had jobs here and there but they all lasted just a few months, and the night Johnny knocked on his door, he hesitated to open the door. By that moment, he had not seen the older in a few months, and they weren't close enough for this kind of visits (up to this day he doesn't know how Johnny got his address), but he did open nevertheless; he figured nothing bad could come from opening the door.  
  
        Johnny already had a few beers on his system by then, and even though his plans of having him as a vocal instructor in his brand new company sounded really tempting, Johnny's breath made him hesitate— scared that this was only a proposal because of his lack of sense. At last, the number of zeros on Doyoung's promised salary were the highlight of the whole propose, it was not much, but certainly more than his previews jobs -that promised salary actually came almost one year later after Johnny's first male group debut-. Years after, Doyoung learned that Johnny got most of his great ideas after a few beers, so when he sees the older drinking, he always makes sure to stick around him, hoping maybe to get promoted (it never happened.)  
  
        Johnny nods before releasing a deep sigh, and Doyoung comes back from memory lane. "Okay, let's go." He looks for a notebook on one of his drawers and Doyoung can't stop himself from staring. Johnny used to look a lot happier before. He remembered thinking how Johnny didn't change a thing when he joined his company, but somewhere along the road, something changed. Someone took Johnny's smile away and Doyoung missed his boss' smile, though he doesn't feel too comfortable to say it. He knows Johnny wouldn't take it the wrong way, like he didn't take his earlier words too serious (or so he hopes). "What?" Johnny asks, and Doyoung shakes his head, finally focusing on what was important.  
  
        Johnny walks to the door and Doyoung quickly glances at the pictures resting on his desk, expecting to see his American family, but instead, there's a picture of Johnny and another guy. He was a little bit shorter than him, and the way they're hugging tells him they're more than friends. Doyoung feels that he has seen him before, but he can't quite put a name to the smiling face.  
  
        A sound stops both of them, looking around trying to figure out where did it come from. Another sound, and Doyoung flinches, recognizing it.  
  
        "I guess it's going to rain." Doyoung says, looking through the window and greeting the calm rain that just started.  
  
        "Yeah," Johnny answers "seems like a storm is coming."

* * *

  
         _The storm is coming_ , Ten thinks, while shaking his umbrella and looking at the sky one last time before going inside the cafe. He doesn't know why he's nervous to talk to Jaehyun, maybe for the fact that he knows what the younger is going to tell him once he talks. He knows Jaehyun very well, he practically raised him -well, not really, since they have only known each other for a few years, but Ten has been a turning point for Jaehyun in so many aspects that Ten likes to think he's that important to him-.  
  
        Ten arrives first, which was a relief for him, and Jaehyun comes into the cafe a few minutes after, with a hangover expression, some dark sunglasses -which seemed odd since it was cloudy outside- and already with a coffee on his hand. Ten forgets for a moment what was he going to tell him, now interested more on what the younger was going to share. He must've been all night long partying with Doyoung, he guesses, and a pinch of envy fires up on his insides. He hasn't partied in a while, not even on weekends. All he has done nowadays is come back from work almost at midnight with enough strength to lie on his bed as soon as he reaches his apartment.

        He has grown up, he likes to think. Even if he still buys cereal for kids, likes to read manga and watch some anime, he's old now. Not too old to be called an ahjussi, but older enough to realize that he can't go back to that certain lifestyle, even if he wanted to -which a big part of him doesn't really want to, having a lot of not-so-delightful memories roaming in his mind-.  
  
        Jaehyun sits in front of him making a sound like a rock hitting ground, and let his forehead crash against the coldness of the table. Ten can only giggle.  
  
        "So, was last night that fun huh?" He asks, and even if he can't see Jaehyun's eyes, he knows he's rolling them. But there's a reason why Jaehyun got along with Ten so well, and it was because he was also as bright as him. Ten is not surprised to see the younger speak up with a cheered up tone.  
  
        "It was amazing, I'm sad it's over" he answers, faking sobs in the process. "Last night.." he continues, this time raising his head and lowering his sunglasses a bit to see the older better "I met a side of Doyoung that I didn't really think it even existed" his cheeks are instantly red-ding up and Ten cannot erase the motherly smile off his face.  
  
        "Let me go first for my coffee, I guess you won't want one" Ten says already leaving the table but Jaehyun grabs his wrist.  
  
        "This won't be enough hyung" Jaehyun points at his coffee, and Ten smiles in return.  
  
        When Ten returns with both coffees to the table, Jaehyun doesn't wait even a second to grab his and take a big gulp, complaining in the process with the hotness of it. "Okay, so here it goes," Jaehyun starts without Ten asking, and Ten can't erase the gladness he's feeling. He was still so comfortable with Jaehyun— at least he was still comfortable with someone. "Doyoung called me last night, he said he wanted to test something, but he never mentioned what it was, not until we already were on our 5th tequila shot and with 2 bottle of soju in our system."  
  
        Ten nods, absorbed in Jaehyun's story. He kind of knows where this was going, but he didn't let his mind make up anything, he wanted to have a sincere surprise.  
  
        "We were dancing; together, alone, with strangers, it didn't matter, it was the time of my life and I didn't think it could get better than that." Jaehyun explains, taking off his sunglasses and letting Ten see what they were hiding. Jaehyun looked super tired, more than Ten had seen him in his whole life, and yet Jaehyun was still excitedly explaining his story. "And then, Doyoung takes out a little plastic bag".  
  
        "Plastic bag?" He repeats, and Jaehyun nods, caring the bridge of his nose.  
  
        "And in this plastic bag, there was something white, like a powder. By this moment he already had dragged me to the men restroom and we already had made out for about ten minutes." Ten now understands, but he's not daring to interrupt while Jaehyun's cheeks pink up a bit. "It was.. well, you know what it was.." Ten nods, hiding the guilty smile with a story of its own behind his coffee. "I couldn't believe Doyoung was offering me that, Doyoung! But I still took it. He was looking at me with this big smile inches away from me, and even though I knew it was probably the alcohol looking at me, I still couldn't refuse."  
  
        "But did you both take it? Cause it can get pretty ugly if—" Jaehyun shook his head, ready to continue.  
  
        "No, it seems like I breathed in really hard, cause I finished the whole thing. Well, it's not like it was much." Jaehyun laughs, recalling the moment and remembering how hurt Doyoung looked when he saw Jaehyun finishing the whole thing up. "At first I thought it wasn't going to work, cause I still felt the same, but after kissing Doyoung for some minutes, I felt like I went on pilot mode, like if kissing him has been the most normal thing, like if I've done it my whole life, but it also felt completely... weird. Like if this time I was really kissing him and all the 'kissing' I did before with him, were nothing compared to this."  
  
        Ten is eager to hear more, and he notices it when he's leaning over the table with his butt barely in the chair. He backs off, hitting the back of the chair.  
  
        "To be honest, I don't remember what happened next. It's all blurry, but Doyoung took me back to my apartment and went to work. I just remembering him hitting me on the way there."  
  
        "Did you text him?" Ten asks.  
  
        "Yeah, yeah, already did" Jaehyun answers, taking his phone out. "Here, look." Ten reads the message and laughs instantly, trying to cover it with his hand.  
  
Hyung~ Did you arrive well?~  
**\- Jaehyun**

  
Fuck off drug stealer  
**\- Doyoung**

  
        "I guess he's sober now" Jaehyun takes his phone away while Ten is still trying to control his laugh, and asks "What did you want to tell me anyways?" Ten's laugh vanishes from him, like he didn't even had it in the first place and he shrugs off. "What?"  
  
        "I had that dream..." Ten whispers, playing with the coffee straw.  
  
        "What dre— the— the roof dream?" Jaehyun asks, and Ten doesn't dare to look at him, so he just nods. He hears Jaehyun's sighing, and he wonders if he feels pity for him or is just trying to come up with a good answer. "How do you feel?" Jaehyun finally asks and Ten flinches.  
  
        He hates it. And he hates that he hates it. Nowadays, Ten has a lot of anger on his insides, but he's not letting it show, not like he did with Johnny once before. He learned the hard way to keep his honest crude opinion on his insides, so he doesn't say it. He doesn't say he hates when someone tries to take care of him, he doesn't say he hates not being the stable one, the independent one, rather than the one people looked up for being so perfect in all the aspects of his life. He hates the tone Jaehyun is using, like he's some kind of psychologist. _What the fuck?!_ , he wants to scream, you _probably wouldn't even figure out a kid's problem_. Jaehyun wouldn't understand him, and Ten knows that damn well. No one would. He hates that. But he hates on top of all that, that he's hating on it.  
  
        Why can't he feel glad that there's people concerned about him? Why does he has to feel like people think he's some kind of charity they should take care of? Ten wonders so many things, but he doesn't say it. So he answers with a social qualified truth.  
  
        "Sad." It's not the answer Jaehyun is looking for -because it's kind of obvious-, and Ten knows that, but he can't give more.  
  
        "Have you guys talked like before?" Jaehyun asks, this time with a tone more deep. Ten scoffs. 'Like before' is the key-point here.  
  
        "No, not really" Ten answers rapidly, trying to give signals to the other that he doesn't want to talk about this.  
  
        "Have you tried?"  
  
        "He doesn't want to. I don't need to try that to know he hates me, he still does."  
  
        "Hyung—"  
  
        "Back off Jaehyun" Ten barks, and it's a low tone he's using. He had never used it with Jaehyun, only with himself when he's screaming and telling his reflection across the mirror how stupid he is. But it's out before he realizes it. "I accepted that fact long time ago, I just— I don't want to have to talk about it, remember it, how it used to be."  
  
        Jaehyun nods, now quiet. He's evading Ten's eyes and Ten is somehow grateful. He doesn't want to deal with that too, the possible guilt he'll feel if he sees the eyes of the younger, hurt by his rash words. Ten expects him to try to change the subject, maybe to something more positive to light up the mood, but Jaehyun asks instead "Do you still do it?" and it's too late to react with anger because he knows what he means by _it_ , and answers like it was a reflect.  
  
        "Every night."

* * *

  
        Doyoung liked to call the trainees his 'pups'. It's a nickname Johnny thought was kind of funny, and Doyoung somehow felt he made an accomplishment by making it up. He wasn't supposed to get attached to the trainees, they're still not signed up so they could literally just drop out any moment, which was okay and normal, but not for him.  
  
        The first pup that dropped out was named Jaegum. Doyoung doesn't remember where did he go (lie, he does, he's under Starship now) and it felt like a complete betrayal for him. Jaegum was training with him for more than a year, so his drop out really affected him and the other trainees, to the point of Johnny telling him to have a week off.  
  
        Doyoung has had a lot of experiences with people leaving him. His dad left his mother, his older brother and him; his boyfriend left him, his real first puppy ran away after a few weeks of being in the family and he really wondered if there was something wrong with him. It was just one of his many problems that consumes a little bit of his day, so when he accepts the job under Johnny's management, he swears to himself that he is not going to get attached to those kids.  
  
        Oh boy, how wrong he was.  
  
        The first weeks were normal, he felt this job as in being a teacher, so when a few trainees dropped out, he just waved them goodbye and hoped for them to have the best of luck in their next company. Then, there was a time, a few months where there were no additions to the groups and no one left, that Doyoung finally started to learn their names (at first he purposely learned them wrong, but it became a bad habit with time). He became to notice them, really remember every and each of their talents and weaknesses, of where he should work more on the next day, making a plan the night before. And just like that, he just became fond of them.  
  
        Every week he prepared different songs, songs that were maybe too difficult, but it was all to challenge their talents, to practice and reach notes that most of times they really didn't think they'd reach. He likes to see the smile on their faces, the sincere shock and most of times, they'd show him how their hands are trembling, cause they can't believe that they're going to perform that in front of Johnny.  
  
        He's just the vocal instructor, but he can't help himself from sneaking into the practice room when Hansol is teaching them a new choreography. He learns why Donghyuck keeps dancing while he practiced his vocals— at first Doyoung thought it was just because he had a lot of energy (which is true), but the reality was that Donghyuck normally lost his breath while dancing, and he couldn't reach some high notes there that he reached when he was standing still in front of Doyoung.  
  
        Hansol was already a year old in the company when Doyoung arrived, and he thought Doyoung was annoying at first, interrupting their dancing lessons by pointing out mistakes on their singing. Hansol wanted to focus only on their dancing, as it was supposed to be, but he somehow got carried away too. One day when Doyoung got sick, Hansol made them practice the same song several times, ordering them to sing while dancing, even if their breath went away, even if they felt like dying. Hansol then noticed that he really shouldn't judge a book by its cover. That he shouldn't have categorized Doyoung into being a careless ass who just wanted his pay, when he was being the complete opposite.  
  
        Both of them are talking with the trainees, assuring them to focus on nothing but themselves when they start the choreography. They have gone through this process way too many times, but the trainees still tremble as if it was the first time Johnny came. Doyoung turns his attention to Chenle and tells him for the fourth time that day, that he shouldn't push his voice in the chorus, he was not ready to reach that high note, maybe in the future. But Chenle was stubborn, he only smiled at Doyoung and told him that he got nothing to worry about, that Lele is going to make him proud. Doyoung rolls his eyes, expecting Chenle to cry after the evaluation.  
  
        Johnny comes inside the room and the atmosphere suddenly feels heavy. The boys stop talking and follow Johnny with their eyes until he sits in the chair in the middle of the practice room. Johnny lifts up his sight from his notebook for the first time and you can hear some gasps. Doyoung snorts, it was probably Jisung and Renjun. Doyoung analyzes them with his eyes and sees Mark's knuckles going white, Jaemin's heartbeat going up with his chest and Jeno trying to look at everywhere but Johnny (he focuses on Johnny's shoes instead.)  
  
        "Show me what you've got" Johnny says, smiling. He wants to raise up the mood a bit, to get them to fear him a little bit less, but it's impossible. He's Seo Johnny, singer, songwriter, compositor, and the most important (and rich) person in this whole building.  
  
        They get in position, they prepared a choreography, a complete performance and each of them a solo song, excluding Mark and Donghyuck, who decided to work together. They started the dancing, and Hansol is nervous too, remembering a few things they had to take care before. He's bouncing on his chair, raising with each difficult part and sitting down when he sees that they nailed it. It makes Doyoung laugh, but he makes sure not to make too much noise to not distract Johnny, who's sitting besides him.  
  
        Karma comes in many ways, and for Doyoung, it came the same way he laughed off at Hansol. He finds himself moving his hand up and down with Donghyuck's ballad and bopping his head at Mark's rap, seeing Johnny from the corner of his eye, doing it too.  
  
        The evaluation ends as soon as it begins, and Johnny whispers some things to both instructors, asking for their opinion in several matters, and they couldn't be biased there. Even though Doyoung wanted to protect Chenle, he couldn't lie to Johnny that his high note ad-lib wasn't well done, as his voice cut off too soon. He doesn't dare to look back at Chenle, who is well aware of his mistake and looking at the ground with both hands hiding in his back. Hansol points out that Renjun still lacked a lot in dancing, and it was very obvious. Both of them wanted for the trainees to get better without being scold, but it was the only way.  
  
        Johnny's words are harsh, not too much, but enough for Chenle to let go of a tear -wiping it away immediately-, for Jaemin to look ten times sadder and for Mark to take out his puppy eyes unconsciously, surprised that Johnny wasn't too fond of his self made lyrics. They got praised at the end though, enough for Donghyuck make a little dance when Johnny said he enjoyed his chosen song and cracking everyone up with a smile. He tells Chenle it's okay to be cocky sometimes, to desire for more than one can handle, but it's for his own good to tone down a little that desire.  
  
        The atmosphere lights up with Donghyuck's antics and Doyoung jokes a little loud that the CEO should treat them a dinner this time. Everyone goes silent, all eyes on Doyoung, who has a hand on Johnny's shoulder, the latter looking back at him all serious. He's waiting for the worst, he waits for a smack as his ears become red, but rather than that, he only receives a big warm smile from Johnny, forming two crescent moons on his eyes (he didn't know that was possible.) He nods and everyone cheers, as if they had just won something.  
  
        After the jokes are done and everyone is leaving the practice room, Doyoung runs up to Hansol, remembering he wanted to talk with him since before.  
  
        "Hey" Doyoung says, badly faking being cool, and Hansol eyes him with a scoff.  
  
        "What do you want?" Hansol asks, stopping in the middle of the corridor.  
  
        "Eh... I was wondering if... ehm..." Doyoung looks both sides before whispering to the older "you had more of ehm... that"  
  
        Hansol laughs out loud and Doyoung thinks he hasn't seen him laugh much before. Why is everyone so bitter around here? "You already finished what I gave you?" Hansol asks in disbelief "You'd need to control yourself y'know, I don't want you becoming an addict"  
  
        "No!" Doyoung answers a little bit too loud, "I didn't get to try what you gave me before, someone else took it by accident" Doyoung mutters now, remembering the incident in the bathroom with Jaehyun. Stupid Jaehyun, Doyoung thinks. He wasn't offering it to him, he was just showing it, but Doyoung was too drunk and slow to stop the younger from sniffing the little bag too strongly. Hansol laughs even louder and Doyoung feels stupid for asking him now, but he really wanted to have the experience and it's not like he knows someone else who can provide it with that.  
  
        "Okay, okay" Hansol says when Doyoung pushes him, and he wipes away one fallen tear. "I can give you a little more, just come when—" An arm appears from behind Doyoung and takes Hansol's neck, playfully resting on him.  
  
        "What are you two doing?" Johnny asks. "Are you still a drug dealer?" He asks Hansol.  
  
        He's joking, and Doyoung notices by the tone and smile he's using while saying it. But both men go silent and Doyoung's wide open eyes are betraying him. He expects Johnny to get mad, to curse and tell them to stop that, that he's going to fire them if they don't, that Doyoung will go to jail, that he won't see his mom again or that he won't have a chance to tell Jaehyun how much he really really liked him cause Doyoung will probably become a fugitive, doing little jobs here and there around the country and the police will be looking for them, so they'd have to buy a '69 mustang (do they even sell them in Korea?) and move around from city to city like in the American movies, not caring for anything. Doyoung sees his future in those two seconds and he's ready to grab Hansol's wrist and run away.  
  
        "Oh" Johnny exclaims in a tone lower, "Damn Hansol, I told you to at least be careful about it" he cracks another smile and Doyoung is dumbfounded. "at least don't do it here" Hansol tries to poke Johnny's armpit but the latter dodges it. "You know," he says, looking at Doyoung while laughing "he once gave me some and it was... so.." his smile dies in a moment and remembers "funny.."  
  
        He remembers, and wishes he didn't. He wishes to bury down that memory, but it might be the most important one for him.

 

* * *

 

**February, 2013.**

  
  
        Hansol got him some when he first opened the company, _a starting gift_ , Hansol said. Johnny frowns and rejects such plastic bag, assuring the blonde that he really wasn't into that shit.  
  
        Johnny came home late that night, after a really long first company party and all he wanted was to lay down. He had fun, of course, up to that moment there wasn't a party where Johnny didn't had a blast, but he had more work than anybody those days, tedious paper work waiting for him on top of his desk. He sincerely wondered if he really wanted to be CEO, if he really wanted to have a huge money debt, but it was too late to back down anyways. He opens the entrance door and SoMo's Hide & Freak greets him before his boyfriend does, who comes running from the kitchen.  
  
        "My favorite CEO arrived!" Ten screams excitedly with a spatula on his hand and spots of flour in his cheeks and hair.  
  
        Johnny felt like crying just a moment ago, but seeing Ten now, somehow charged him up completely, like if he was a battery and Ten his energy (he may or may not had been listening to Hong Jin Young these days.) He knew there was probably going to be a huge mess in the kitchen, but he didn't care. Not at that moment when his heart was fluttering that much.  
  
        Ten says something about not being mad of not being invited to their last minute party (the tone said otherwise) but Johnny wasn't hearing. He let his bag drop down with a heavy sound and walks up to him, laying both hands on Ten's cheeks and shutting him up with a kiss. Johnny had kissed him that afternoon when they met for lunch, but feeling now Ten's lips against his, he felt like he had craved the whole day for them. Ten smiles and corresponds the kiss, wrapping his arms around Johnny's waist.  
  
        "I missed you too" Ten whispers when they part away, and Johnny doesn't let him move away much, wanting to feel his breath against his. "Are you okay?" Ten asks, this time concerned.  
  
        Johnny pecks him before sighing, "now I am" and Ten chuckles.  
  
        "Cheesy"  
  
        Ten parts away and grabs Johnny's bag to places it over the couch. Johnny peeks over the wall to see his kitchen, and indeed, it looked like a tornado had just danced around it. A tornado named Ten.  
  
        "I hope it's okay that I came to you apartment without letting you know beforehand.." Ten mutters, and Johnny changes his horror expression to a soft smile.  
  
        "Of course, you're always welcomed" _But not your cooking skills_ , he thinks.  
  
        "I wanted to make cookies for you, but somehow it got burned..."  
  
        "Somehow?" Johnny repeats with a laugh. What was supposed to be two batches of cookies were lying on his counter, completely burned. They actually looked more like mud cakes, like the ones Johnny used to make as a kid -but even those looked tastier than Ten's burned cookies-.  
  
        "We should try them" Ten says, looking at the dark 'cookies', Johnny looks at him with wide eyes and both trays on his hands, almost over the trash bin. "I'm joking" he laughs "...Am I?"  
  
        "Stop" Johnny warns "I hate it when you do that"  
  
        "I know, I'm sorry" Ten laughs again, resting his elbows over the counter "...Am I?" One serious look was all that was needed for Ten to run to the living room. Johnny chuckles, and goes back to his task of ripping the cookies off the tray but they were really stuck to it.  
  
        "Fuck it" Johnny whispers to himself, and throws both trays to the bin. This way at least Ten won't try to do more cookies, he figures.  
  
        Johnny looks at the cookies laying in the garbage bin and he thinks about the first time he made his own. He was about 10 years old, and, most probably, Ten did the same mistake he did then. He forgot about the cookies being in the oven. He remembers his mom laughing it off when she saw Johnny's cookies, and he forgot all the fear he had about her scolding him.  
  
        He missed feeling like home. He wasn't looking for something to remind him of Chicago, he wasn't really homesick; at least not now. But he wanted to feel like the place he was at, the people who he was with, were home. He didn't feel like home when he was in college. So he felt alone. Even if he shared an apartment with three other people, he still felt out of place, like they were not home. His first boyfriends weren't a help either, that's why he lasted mostly 4 months with them.  
  
        But, weirdly, looking at the burned cookies, he felt like home. Ten wasn't even Korean, he didn't remind him of anything of his childhood, but the younger made him feel safe, comfortable. Like he could spent his entire life next to him and not minding a bit. The thought was frightening though, they have been only dating for almost 3 months and Johnny could not believe he was falling in love this quickly.  
  
        Johnny smiles, letting the idea sit on his mind for a while.  
  
        "Do you want me to order some Thai food?" Johnny asks loudly while cleaning his hands "I think I still have the number of the place you recommended me... Ten?"  
  
        There was no answer from the younger, and it was odd, he'd normally come running when Johnny offered him that. At last, it takes a few seconds before he comes into the kitchen again, and he doesn't come alone.  
  
        "What is this?" The tone was serious, but Johnny knew he wanted to smile by the way the corner of his lips were lifting up. Ten was carrying with his index finger and thumb what looked like the exact same plastic bag Hansol offered him back at the restaurant.  
  
        "Fuckin' Hansol" Johnny scoffs.  
  
        "I didn't know you were into this" Ten says.  
  
        It had only been a few months since they started dating, and some topics were still left unknown. Like if they had tasted drugs before, of if they had any sort of kinks -and by the way Ten moaned loudly every time Johnny bit his collarbone during sex and make-outs, Johnny figured the younger did had some-, but Johnny wasn't too preoccupied. He wasn't into drugs, like he assured it to Hansol a few times.  
  
        "Hansol offered me some today, but I rejected him. He must've still put it inside my backpack, I'll get rid of it, don't worry." Johnny steps forward and Ten, backwards.  
  
        "Woah woah, wait a minute." He says, hiding the little bag into his fist, and faking some thinking. "Well... since he already gave it to you, we could maybe.. hmm.. I don't know... use it?" Ten was being careful with his words, but Johnny noticed the mix of nervousness and eagerness in his voice. He wanted to try it.  
  
        "I'm not into this stuff" Johnny says.  
  
        "But I am... maybe"  
  
        "You've tried it?" Johnny asks, surprised.  
  
        "Nope, but I've been wanting to." Ten answers, revealing the bag and looking at it like a kid looked at his lollipop. "Can we?"  
  
        Johnny contemplates the idea a few seconds, looking at Ten using his puppy eyes. He really didn't want to try it, all he wanted was to sleep.  
  
        "It'll only be this once, I swear" Ten reassures.  
  
        Ten wasn't home for him, at least not yet, but if Johnny wanted to make him home, wouldn't seeing him under drugs help on that? That's some stupid logic, and he knows, but it's the best he's got at that moment.  
  
        Johnny sighs, maybe he'll regret it after, but it's okay because he's at least doing it with someone who's good enough to become his home.  
  
        "Okay, let's do it."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't do drugs  
> this fic wasn't supposed to be longer than 5k, and it ended up way longer than that lol  
> comments and kudos are highly appreciated


	2. after the storm pt.2

  
        Johnny throws himself to the little sofa outside of his office, closing his eyes for a moment. He wants to get some peace, he wants to go away from everything, from work, from people, from his thoughts… from Ten. Yes. He mostly wanted to get away from Ten, or the thought of him, more precisely.

        The past few days he’s been trying to arrive late, doing as most work as he could before Hansol threw him out— cause if Johnny’s not leaving, then Hansol isn’t either, and Hansol likes to sleep. That usually came in handy when Johnny wanted to vent, but these days he just wants to avoid, so the older isn’t much help. He’s been arriving home too late these days, with the electric clock threatening him with the hour, showing always that it’s a little past 2AM. There’s always a little snore acclimating the bedroom when he opens the door and he normally feels relieved.  
  
        He hits his forehead with his fist a few times before resting it back over his chest. Why does he has to be such an asshole? When was it that he started to feel relieved to see his boyfriend sleeping, to not have as much time with him, to not hold proper conversations with him? He’d like to change that. Yeah, as much as he wants some peace in this room, but that’s not happening either.  
  
        There’s a buzzing sound, and Johnny identifies it as his cellphone, but he doesn’t want to answer. Not now, not on his 5 minutes break. But the sound doesn’t stop, and with the third call, he answers.  
  
        “What’s up” he says, sitting up and caressing both of his tear ducts with his thumb and index finger. “Oh… okay…. Yeah, I actually was going to call you.” lie. “I’m arriving late too… no, you don’t have to- no, do-don’t wait up I ca-... oh… okay… then, see you later.”  
  
        He throws his phone somewhere on the sofa and covers his face with both hands. This is just not his day. He didn’t want to get up this morning, he didn’t want to attend the dinner, he didn’t want to have a late night fight, which was still uncertain that it was going to happen, but he trusted his gut. And his gut was telling him to bury himself two feet into the earth for the next two days.

 

* * *

  
        Ten sighs. He called his boyfriend to say he’s arriving late, and he expected something different than ‘okay’. Maybe he was expecting too much. He throws his phone away over his jacket and hits ‘play’ on his laptop, dancing again the never ending song. He needed to come up with a choreography but steps were simply not coming out. He was repeating some, and then abruptly dancing to another choreography he had already made. He groans in disbelief, punching the air while he’s at it.  
  
        The room was left alone. There were normally another dancers with him, helping him to come up with a choreography as he sometimes got requests from idol group’s companies. But not today, not even on the rooms besides his, and Ten was also picky. He needed to have a good listen to the song before taking the job or rejecting it. It’s not that he disliked the songs, but he needed to love them, to feel them, to actually try to stop himself from dancing along with the first listen.  
  
        He repeats the song and closes his eyes, facing the mirror. It starts smoothly and Ten lets his body dance to it like a reaction. He already had made steps over half of the song, but he was stuck, so he was prepared to throw it all out if that helped him finish it. His arms move on its own, and he feels his feet cooperating, doing twists and making squeezes with his sneakers over the flat floor. _It is going well so far_ , he thinks. A mischievous smile slips away and he opens his eyes on time, flirting with the mirror with a killer gaze. He was getting into character, forgetting his problems outside of this room. Forgetting his anger, forgetting Jaehyun, forgetting Joh—  
  
        “Oh for fucks sake!” he screams, and he screams with both of his lungs, grabbing his hair. It was too much for him, and he was getting tired of everything. The thought of Johnny made him go nuts today, and he was wondering why.  
  
        Sadly, the older was always on his mind. And he got used to that, he worked and made up whole choreographies thinking about Johnny smiling and dancing along besides him. It was stupid, a naive idea, but it worked most of the days. Today is not like that though, thinking simply about his name was enough to make him want to scream in pain. But he didn’t have time for this, he needed to finish the choreo. It was due to the day after tomorrow and he had only half of it, which obviously didn’t satisfied him one bit, so he had nothing. He walks up to his laptop and stops the song, looking for a playlist in particular.  
  
        “Here it is” He clicks play and tries to really empty his mind. He had a playlist for this type of situation, for the times he felt completely unfocused on what he was doing and he needed to dance it out, letting the tension leave his body.  
  
        Travis Mills’ Young & Stupid starts playing and Ten dances along. He smiles, even if he doesn’t mean it. He needed to force himself to feel that smile, to make it sincere.  
  
        “It just keeps getting better” he sings along. “Life just keeps getting better” he screams with a hand besides his mouth, directing to an imaginary crowd two feet away from him “it just keeps getting better, life just keeps getting better!” he bops his head with the rhythm of the song and there it was. He sees it from the mirror. The sincere smile, the real feeling of having fun. He was not faking this, he was not trying hard now, he was just being himself, and it felt so goddamn good.  
  
        There’s a drop of sweat going down his back when the music ends, and the next song starts immediately, and he just follows. He ignores the fatigue he’s starting to feel and lets his body move without his consent. He looks back at the camera he always sets up to monitor his own dancing, and he has fun on his own. He’ll probably feel embarrassed watching the video, but not now, not when he had the chance to be himself and not hide anything.  
  
        The second song comes to an end, and he rushes to grab his water and dance the third one, _last one_ , he says to himself, _I still need to finish the other choreo._ He gulps down his water remembering some of the steps he did now, as he could maybe use them later. The third song plays, and his smile vanishes. He drops the water and stares at the laptop.  
  
        SoMo’s Hide  & Freak resounds around the room, and, sadly, he remembers the person he’s not supposed to remember. His heart skips a beat. 

 

* * *

  
**February, 2013**

  
        Ten replays SoMo’s Hide  & Freak while Johnny sits down on the sofa, leaving two beers on the table in front, obviously preoccupied of what they were about to do. He played the song in an attempt to calm his boyfriend, but it was actually not changing much. Ten comes to him and sits a few inches away, looking at the little bag and then his boyfriend, repeating the process a few times.  
  
        “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to” Ten says, “I wanna do this, but you don’t need to—”  
  
        “No,” Johnny interrupts with an unstable voice. He coughs. “I-I want to… really” no, he doesn’t. But he didn’t feel like turning this experience off. He wanted to do it, then say he did it and never do it again in his life.  
  
        Ten laughs, “At least try not to be obvious that you don't mean it” he gets near to Johnny’s face and whispers “it’s going to be alright, trust me” before kissing the older’s worries off. The kiss went a little deeper than Ten was planning it to be, but he didn’t mind. He didn’t mind Johnny’s hands going to both sides of his face or Johnny’s tongue forcing its entrance on his mouth. Ten giggles over the kiss and Johnny parts away, but he leaves his forehead against the younger’s with his eyes shut. “Better?” Ten asks, and Johnny nods.  
  
        Ten lies the powder over the table a little away from the beers and with his credit card, he straightens it out, sitting on the floor in front of the sofa. Johnny watches him over it, still unsure of what he was about to do.  
  
        “Can you hand me a paper? Anything would work” Ten says, completely focused on the powder, breaking it off in long lines He opens his beer with his other hand and gulps it down. Johnny looks around the living room but he doesn’t find anything, so he takes out his wallet and hands him a bill.  
  
        “Will this work?”  
  
        Ten looks back and smiles “Eung” he pats the floor besides him “come here” Johnny does as told, still looking nervous. “Do you want to do it first?” the older shakes his head frantically. Ten giggles again. “Okay then,” he rolls the dollar into a tube and gets near the powder, eyeing Johnny to still see him as frighten as ever.  
  
        The tube is placed between the powder and Ten’s nostril, and he breaths in strongly, finishing the white line in less than two seconds. He shakes his head a few times, and Johnny looks at him, preoccupied.  
  
        “So?” Johnny asks.  
  
        “I dunno… I guess it’ll take a few minutes to quick in” Ten answers, getting up with his beer in his hand and handling Johnny the dollar tube. “I feel fine” he laughs. He doesn’t look fine though. “You do it now” he says, finishing up his beer in a few seconds.  
  
        Johnny nods, and looks at the powder still laying on the table. He sighs, taking the tube and lowering his head down like Ten previously did. He needed to do this, end this now. _It’ll probably won’t affect me that much_ , he thinks. _I just need to do this and I’m done_. _It’s easy Johnny, just do it_. He looks back at Ten, spinning around the room with a smile on his face and his arms extended. He opens his beer and gulps it down, looking for his courage (it’s not there). He places the tube like Ten did, and breaths weakly through his mouth. It’ll be quick.  
  
        1...2…  
  
        “Maybe I sho—”  
  
        “Ow!” Ten cries.  
  
        He looks back at Ten, who’s now laying on the ground with his beer and the lamp besides him and the light bulb shattered all over the floor with some pieces on Ten’s arm, which is now bleeding.  
  
        “Oh fuck!” Johnny screams. Ten is moaning in pain and Johnny sits on the other side, giving a better look to the wound “are you okay?”  
  
        “I don’t think I like this drug” Ten laughs between moans.  
  
        Johnny takes Ten to the nearby hospital, with still some pieces of the bulb on his arm. On their way there, he tells the younger to not speak, afraid that the doctor would catch on Ten’s ‘special state.’ Ten keeps looking at the wound, fascinated with the pieces going under his skin. Johnny hurries Ten, dragging him into the ER with the good arm, sits him in a chair and goes with the nurse sitting behind the counter.  
  
        “You didn’t even last two freaking minutes before doing something stupid” Johnny vents, and Ten smiles.  
  
        “At least I did it” he mocks, showing off his tongue, and Johnny stops himself from hitting him just because he’s injured.  
  
        A doctor comes not too long after, he sits Ten on a bed, and Ten makes sure to shut up like Johnny told him, while Johnny explained what happened. He made up a lie where the lights were off and Ten accidentally stepped on his own foot ( _but I walk fine_ , Ten mumbles), falling over the lamp sitting on the table behind him. It’s kind of the truth, but he leaves out the part where Ten is under drugs _and_ alcohol. Fortunately, the doctor buys it and he doesn’t ask further questions.  
  
        “You’re too handsome to be a doctor” Ten states, making the doctor chuckle.  
  
        “Ten! Shut up” Johnny barks in a whisper.  
  
        “It’s okay” the doctor reassures with a smile, “People say it a lot”  
  
        “But your face... it’s actually nothing special” Ten continues, letting the doctor finish up his bandage. “Like your surname” he reads on the doctor’s name tag “Lee” and snorts.  
  
        Johnny didn’t stop himself from flicking a finger on Ten’s forehead then, eyeing him to really shut up.  
  
        The doctor leaves and Johnny sits on his previous place in front of Ten, resting both of his arms on Ten’s knees and looking down at the floor, sighing and whispering something about being relieved that he didn’t want to test Ten’s blood. “Why would he want to test my blood?” Ten giggles, and Johnny follows, completely done with the whole situation. He groans, letting the stress go out of his system and Ten inspects his bandages for the fourth time. He’s not too drunk or drugged, but Johnny still couldn’t trust him in this state.  
  
        “You’ll have to sleep at my place” Johnny says, announcing it rather than asking him. Ten lifts up an eyebrow and his smirk doesn’t pass unnoticed.  
  
        “I’ll have to? I’m not too bad y’know, I can still drive if I wan—”  
  
        “God, no!” Johnny exclaims. “No driving, no more—” he looks both sides before whispering “drugging” Ten laughs “and no more weird things. You’ll come to my house, I’ll take a bath and we’ll go to sleep.”  
  
        “But I wanna take a bath too” Ten says, with no shame or innocence in his tone.  
  
        “You’ll take a bath after me if you want to” Johnny answers bluntly, sighing with his eyes closed. Ten lowers his head down, and whispers on Johnny’s ear.  
  
        “What if I wanna take a bath with you?” Ten's voice sounds tempting and Johnny pushes Ten away, looking around to confirm that everyone was on their own business and he’s the only one feeling hot.  
  
        “Uhm… uh… we-we could maybe arrange something li-like that…” Johnny answers, caressing the back of his neck with his hand and Ten giggles.  
  
        “I love you.”  
  
        If Johnny’s cheeks weren’t red already, then they were definitely red as a cherry right now. Neither of them had never said that. Johnny was sure that he loved the younger by now, but he didn’t want to push the relationship by announcing things that weren’t to be announced yet. But Ten was sure of what he said, or so he looked like it —if it was because Ten wasn’t completely on his right mind, Johnny didn’t know—, he was cockily looking down at him and Johnny wanted to kiss the smirk off of his face so bad, but they were on a public space.  
  
        “Just wait Chittaphon”, Johnny whispers on the younger’s ear when they were on their way out “just wait until we’re in bed”  
  
        Ten snorts. “For what? For you screaming how much you love me?” Johnny spanks Ten on his butt and tells him to get on the car.  
  
        Sadly for Johnny, Ten wasn’t so wrong on his prediction of that night.

 

* * *

  
        Johnny is looking down at his meal, playing with a piece of kimchi, obviously not interested on whatever topic everyone was laughing about— but making sure to smile every once in awhile so he would go unnoticed by others. Two tables away, Doyoung keeps stealing glances at him, concerned. His boss didn’t finish his sentence back at the company when he interrupted Hansol. And he looked obviously sad, or, well, at least _obviously_ for him. He had excused himself off and Doyoung had asked Hansol what was with him, but Hansol changed the topic back to their deal.  
  
        Doyoung sighs. There was a little bag with powder, exactly like the one he gave him a few days before. He phoned Jaehyun at the speed of light after Hansol gave it to him, and invited him to the dinner. But all that excitement he felt while talking with Jaehyun over the phone, was weirdly vanished, as he was too bothered by his boss’ sadness, too much for his own good.  
  
        It’s not like he had a crush on Johnny —at least not now, he did when they were in college, which could be the main reason why he always avoided the older—, he was really progressing with Jaehyun, and the latter made him happy like no one else would— though Jaehyun didn’t need to know that. He felt a kind of motherly obligation to hear Johnny’s mind though, but he wasn’t the right person or in the right place to do so. Hansol, who was sitting in a different table, didn’t show one bit of concerning about his boss, and he was Johnny’s long time friend at the end. Doyoung sighs, maybe he was thinking too much about this. He’s sure Johnny had people worried about him, so he should start worrying about his damn business instead.  
  
        But he can’t stop himself from eyeing Johnny. Not until Donghyuck tries to steal a piece of bulgogi off his plate, and Doyoung stops him with his chopsticks. “What do you think you’re doing?” Chenle laughs on Doyoung’s left and Donghyuck looks away, like he never attempted to do such thing. “That’s what I was thinking.” he whispers.  
  
        Donghyuck’s new target is Jeno, who seems in a deep talk with Jaemin, and he manages to steal a piece, making Mark laugh like a seal and Jeno scream _‘ow!’_ when he turns around, pointing at him and looking back at Doyoung who was laughing like everyone else in the table. But Doyoung instinctively looks back at Johnny, catching him faking a smile and lowering down his sight to his plate again, letting his mouth going to its original form, a frown.  
  
        “Too slow!” Donghyuck mocks Jeno, and Doyoung tells him that it’s enough.  
  
        But Donghyuck tries again, and this time on Renjun who went for another coke.  
  
        “Stop stealing food” Doyoung warns, slapping Donghyuck’s arm away and using his authoritarian tone. Two hands cover his eyes and everyone on the table goes quiet, looking at the newcomer. “Stop it Jaehyun”  
  
        “You’re no fun” the younger answers, sitting on the empty chair on his right. “Are you even happy to see me?”  
  
        Doyoung overly fakes a smile. “Of course” and everyone laughs, but not Jaehyun, who’s pouting. _Jaehyun looks extremely sexy right now_ , Doyoung thinks. He was a little wet because of the rain outside, but it wasn’t much. Just on his hair, as if he just got out of the shower.  
  
        Doyoung introduces Jaehyun to the trainees and the trainees to Jaehyun, and Mark takes interest on the older when he says he lived in America for 4 years. But Jaehyun’s skills on English were very rusty, so he turns around to Doyoung when Mark asks him a complicated question, causing Donghyuck to choke on his coke with a laugh.  
  
        “Why’d you call me though?” Jaehyun asks, stealing a piece of bulgogi off of Doyoung’s plate, and Donghyuck gasps in disbelief.  
  
        “He can do that?!” he asks, pointing.  
  
        “I can do more than that” Jaehyun smirks and winks, and Doyoung kicks him under the table.  
  
        “Anyways, I called you…” Doyoung looks at his pups. Everyone is still looking at him, but his gaze scares them away, making them abruptly grow interest in their own plates. “For this” Doyoung takes his hand inside his coat’s pocket and shows only a little part of the bag. Jaehyun gasps.  
  
        “Hyung, I can’t do that again. I didn’t feel very good aft—” Jaehyun stops his excuses as Doyoung flicks his finger on Jaehyun’s forehead.  
  
        “I’m not telling you to do it, hell, I didn’t even tell you the first time either.” He scoffs, not taking his eyes off of Jaehyun and taking the bottle of soju Jeno and Donghyuck were trying to steal.  
  
        “What?”  
  
        “Yesterday,” Doyoung gets near Jaehyun, and proceeds whispering “I was just showing it to you, not offering!”  
  
        Jaehyun nervously laughs it off, finally understanding all the anger Doyoung had yesterday night (or was it today’s early morning?) while he punched him on their way back to his apartment, and today with his not-so-charming texts. Now’s Chenle’s turn to try to steal some food off of Doyoung’s plate, and he was being successful since Doyoung was giving him his back while looking at Jaehyun. But Jaehyun crossed sight with the young Chinese and Chenle signs him to be quiet with a weird scary stare that made Jaehyun get frightened, making Doyoung look around to see what was wrong.  
  
        “Aish, just take it!” Doyoung exclaims, giving the plate to Chenle who gets really happy.  
  
        “Oh my god!” Chenle covers his smile with his hands. “Doyoung hyung is so cool~” Donghyuck complains again, but Doyoung doesn’t even acknowledges him.

        "Do you starve these kids or what?"

        "No, but they seem to have three stomachs"  
  
        “Why are you even sitting here?” Jaehyun complains.  
  
        “Because I lost rock-paper-scissors with the other instructors” Doyoung bitterly laughs, pouring some soju on the little cup and gulping it down.  
  
        “I thought hyung loved us” Jaemin says.  
  
        “Not this much” Doyoung answers, getting up and telling Jaehyun to do so, going to an empty table together. “Okay, so I want to take this, and I want you to watch me.”  
  
        Jaehyun shrugs. “That doesn’t sound too exciting”  
  
        “It would’ve been if only you didn’t take my original bag yesterday” Doyoung complains, and sighs when Jaehyun still looked sad. “I’ll share it with you, but this time I’m taking it first” Jaehyun’s face lightens up and Doyoung laughs. "What about the 'I didn't feel very good' part?" he teases, and Jaehyun laughs more, being caught up.  
  
        It’s weird, cause every time Doyoung shows a little bit of happiness, his body makes him look back to the place Johnny was sitting. It was like a reminder that there was someone not happy at all there, and he had to do something about it.  
  
        “What?” Jaehyun asks, trying to see what Doyoung was seeing.  
  
        “Nothing is just…” Doyoung stares at Jaehyun, who’s patiently waiting for Doyoung to continue. “Have you ever had this feeling that you should take care of someone?”  
  
        Jaehyun thinks about Ten, but only nods. “Why?”  
  
        “My boss has been really down these past few months, and today he seems to be twice as down, and it’s weird since it’s my boss and I shouldn’t really feel like that for him, but he’s Johnny after all and I’ve known him since college and had a slight crush on him—”  
  
        “What?” Jaehyun interrupts, placing his hand on top of Doyoung’s.  
  
        “What? I had a little crush on him, but it’s over, i actually like someone else” Doyoung smiles, ~~seductively~~ weirdly moving his eyebrows.    
  
        “No, not that. What did you say it was his name?”  
  
        “Johnny?” Doyoung answers, confused.  
  
        “Johnny what?”  
  
        “Seo Johnny, why? what’s with his name?”  
  
        Jaehyun looks back where Doyoung was previously looking. It’s been awhile since he saw the older, but now that he was looking for him, it was not hard to spot him. He sighs. He didn’t know Doyoung worked under him.  
  
        “I know him” he answers.  
  
        “Really? How so?” Doyoung asks.  
  
        Jaehyun hums uncomfortably. “Just from some acquaintances.” but Doyoung doesn’t buy it.  
  
        “Do you know why is he like that?” Doyoung asks, testing him.  
  
        “Maybe..” Jaehyun answers, suddenly catching interest on his feet. “But you should ask him yourself.”  
  
        “Why? Just tell me” Doyoung laughs.  
  
        “I’m no gossiper hyung, his problems are not mine to share.” and with that, Jaehyun stands up and goes outside.  
  
        Doyoung looks at him go, taking out his cellphone on his way out. He was in disbelief. What the.  
  
        Doyoung knew Jaehyun for only a couple of months. He was in a nightclub (such miracle), and when he was about to leave (because nightclubs are not his thing) this beautiful boy came to him and made a hopeless flirt, telling him that he knew how to say ‘love’ in 4 languages. _Everyone with access to google translator knows_ , Doyoung thinks. He was wondering why such beautiful boy was alone (and on top of that, flirting with him) but the flirt said it all, so he gave him a chance. Jaehyun ended up being quite the fun, or so he thought until he made Doyoung go dance with him. But even dancing with him went well, and Jaehyun got serious and ten times sexier over the dancing floor, making Doyoung want to kiss him. It was also probably the alcohol acting, but he didn’t care, so he did it there. And on the cab. And also while Jaehyun was looking for the keys of his apartment and another time when they were inside and Jaehyun threw him onto the bed.  
  
        Doyoung figures Jaehyun was going to be a one time thing, and he was kind of sad. In another context, they would’ve clicked so well. But when he was up trying to get into his jeans and  trying to ignore his hangover, and Jaehyun suddenly gets up and corners him against the wall with this same gaze he had the night before, Doyoung was then not so sure anymore. His jeans fall off from his hands. Jaehyun was so direct telling the older that he’d love to repeat what happened last night, and Doyoung is still petrified.  
  
        10 minutes later, he’s standing outside of Jaehyun’s apartment with Jaehyun’s number, hot cheeks and an everlasting peck from Jaehyun. Maybe this won’t be a one time thing, he figures.  
  
        And now, three months later, Doyoung’s only realizing they really didn’t know much about each other. Even if Doyoung texts him almost every day and they get together almost every weekend, they still knew so little of each others personal life. Jaehyun was certainly not a fuck buddy for Doyoung, but why was it that the only thing he really knew well was Jaehyun’s naked body?  
  
        He ruffles his hair in frustration. Now this is where he needs to chase him down, and he goes outside, but he doesn’t make it very far as Jaehyun was on a phone call just a few meters away with his umbrella covering him from the rain.

 

* * *

  
        The restaurant is almost empty by 12AM, the trainees left a few hours ago with their manager, and the instructors along with the staff took their Friday party to somewhere else. Johnny didn’t mind that he wasn’t invited —not even after he was going to pay their whole damn meal—, really. He actually was wondering when were they going to do it, as he just wanted this to end and go back to his bed. He’ll probably arrive to an empty apartment, so he had a slight chance to go to sleep before the other came. But his expectations were dying as there was still a few people left, dancing between tables with a bottle of soju and the sound of the radio, and the ahjumma clapping her hands excitedly sitting in a chair.  
  
        He sighs, gulping his soju as soon as he poured it, ending it. He never liked soju, at least not much. But it was cheap, so he got sure to keep drinking it, slowly though, to not get drunk easily. But his eyes were starting to drift off, warning that it was time to go home before he falls asleep in the side-way.  
  
        Johnny was never melancholic when he was drinking. He was actually more of the type who fell asleep quickly or started to have great ideas, depending on the situation. But right now, he had no millionaire ideas, he was rather feeling sleepy, not too much to fall asleep right there, but enough to imagine a wet Ten walking inside the restaurant, shaking his umbrella. He laughs, ignoring the shiver going down his spine, he’s now imagining things. He has fallen asleep on the street, thrown up, even got on a fight (a fight that was more about him hitting a tree that supposedly moved and was on his way), but never imagined people. This was a first. Ten was not there, and he was sure. Ten was never there. Nor physically or sentimentally, and he learned that the hard way.  
  
        The supposedly ‘Ten’ walks slowly to him, and Johnny can’t really focus on him. He stands up before ‘Ten’ sits down and he walks up to the ahjumma, handing her his credit card and telling her to charge everything there. The ahjumma says something flattering, he can’t quite catch what, but he smiles nevertheless, feeling her hand pat his head like he was a puppy. She gives him his bill for his signature, and he takes the pen, doodling something over the paper that was supposed to be his famous signature.  
  
        He looks besides him, and ‘Ten’ is standing there, sadly staring at him, but Johnny doesn't pay attention to his expression. He hands him the bill to inspect it.  
  
        “Did I write it well?” Johnny asks, ‘Ten’ nods and he smiles, handing back the pen and the bill to the ahjumma, receiving back his card.  
  
        He walks outside the restaurant, opening his umbrella even though it was barely raining now, with soft raindrops, and it takes him a few seconds to walk properly, but he manages. Ten is walking behind him, watching carefully, afraid that the older will slip and hit the ground any moment. _So he was really Ten, huh_ , he thinks, realizing it there. Johnny hates when he does that. He always felt Ten as a little duck walking behind, or like a child following his mother (which was basically the same analogy? anyhow) when he did that, so he turns around, shocking Ten for the sudden change.  
  
        “Why do you do that?” Johnny asks, furrowing his eyes.  
  
        “Do what?”  
  
        “Walk behind. It’s not like I occupy the whole side-way, there’s plenty of space besides me.” Ten laughs, but even drunk Johnny can notice it was the forced one, the one you do when your boss says a bad joke. He was getting angrier, and weirdly, a little sober. “Don’t do that.” he scolds, and before Ten can ask _do what_ , he continues “don’t laugh when you don’t mean it, I hate that too”  
  
        Ten shrugs his shoulders and nods, whispering an apology and walking up to his side. Johnny sighs, that’s not what he wanted. Well, technically it was, but he didn’t want to feel like this. Like they were still not okay, even if they lied to each other that they were. They walk quietly for a few minutes, and even though Johnny wanted to ask why was he there, he was too afraid. So Ten ends the torture of silence. And Johnny wishes he didn’t.  
  
        “We’re weird.”  
  
        Johnny nods. “Yeah.”  
  
        “We said we weren’t going to be weird.”  
  
        Johnny nods again. “Yeah.”  
  
        It was obvious they were both stiffening with the others presence— or it was maybe because of the cold rainy night?, Johnny never knew. But he knew he wanted to act normal as much as Ten wanted, and it wasn’t even the alcohol making him feel weird, it was history. The memories. The thought of them screaming at each other, Ten with tears on his eyes. Johnny too. Johnny slamming the door behind him. It was all too much, and a few words of ‘let’s try to forget everything and leave it on the past’ clearly didn’t fix anything. The thought of them waking up and falling asleep with smiles and kisses were long gone, almost as if they never existed, and Johnny wondered if they were ever going to come back. Most probably, not.  
  
        “Why are we weird?” Ten asks, and Johnny laughs.  
  
        “Isn’t it obvious?” Johnny answers.  
  
        They both look up from the ground to see each other, and a laugh acclimates the lonely street along with the rain. The laugh dies a few seconds after, making them return to look at the asphalt.  
  
        “Why can’t we be normal again?” Ten asks a minute later, and Johnny doesn’t know how to answer. The answer is obvious too, but he’s too afraid to say it.  
  
        He shrugs his shoulders instead.  
  
        “We should try harder then” Ten continues, and the anger fires up again on Johnny’s inside using the alcohol as a fuel and vanishing some of its effect off his system.  
  
        He has tried. He has tried harder than ever. He was sure he tried more than Ten did, so it wasn’t his fault. At least that’s what he wanted to think, that even though it takes two to mess things up, Ten mostly did the whole work. Ten killed this. And he was in no place to tell him to try harder on rescuing something that was never going to be rescued, that maybe at this point, it didn’t need to be.  
  
        “I forgave you” Johnny barks. Stopping his walk, making Ten look up from the ground. They’ve arrived. “I tried, and I forgave you.”  
  
        “I know” Ten answers, gifting him a calm smile that ended up hurting Johnny even more. “But why does it feel like you never actually did?”  
  
        Johnny laughs in disbelief of what he was hearing. He must be joking. “I did” he reassures, but it’s more of a punch-back rather than a comment to make things better “it’s not my fault that you think you don’t deserve it.”  
  
        Johnny rushes on finding his keys to open the front door of the apartment, and Ten only stares. He’s getting angrier too. He was mad at Johnny. No, he was mad at Johnny’s words. Because he was right, because he was mad at himself on top of everything. Ten was the problem here. But he’s not thinking about that, his rage only makes him think about an answer that will surely make the other get angrier, but he doesn’t care. Not until it’s out and Johnny freezes.  
  
        “Are things going to change at some point or am I just wasting my time?” it’s there, he said it. There was no turning back. He didn't even know why he said it. Maybe to hurt the older, like he always does.  
  
        “So that’s what I am for you now? Waste of your time?” Johnny asks, turning around. “I didn’t fucking tell you to come down to the restaurant, fuck, I don’t even know how you managed to find me there. So instead of asking me that, ask it to yourself.”  
  
        Ten wants to say something, but Johnny cuts him off, going inside and stopping the door from closing with his hand.  
  
        “Fix up whatever the fuck is wrong with you before coming up to me” Johnny groans, slamming the door behind him, leaving Ten alone in the dark.  
  
        Ten’s heart is beating fast, and he doesn’t want anything more than to open the door and slam Johnny against the wall, screaming him that _**he**_ was his fucking problem. But he can’t. He literally can’t.  
  
        ‘Cause that’s not his home anymore.  
  
        It was at some point, he had the key to that door at some point. He called this place his home at some point. But the lock changed, as well as the other person living there, with Johnny. So even if he wanted, it was impossible for him to force his entrance. He didn’t had the right to do it. He never had. He turns around, trying to control his rage and tears from going down his cheeks.

 

* * *

  
        Johnny lies his back against the door, feeling his knees go weak and hitting the hard cold floor with his butt. He feels his hands shaking, still processing what just happened, expecting it to be just an scenario of his imagination. But it was too real, the slam of the door was still buzzing in his ears and the feelings were real too, palpitating in his skin.  
  
        He wanted to cry. It was the first time he saw Ten in a long time, and he didn’t expect it to be this way. He actually didn’t expect to see the younger again, to have this fight yet again. But Ten was always unexpected, and that wasn’t a surprise for Johnny. He got used to Ten’s surprising ideas and unexpected visits to his office and parties. He didn’t mind that then. But he minded this.  
  
        A floating head pops from the kitchen, and greets Johnny who’s still sitting on the floor. Then, Johnny finally hears the music in his apartment. Tom Odell's Can't Pretend is being played, and Johnny finds it ironic.  
  
        “Are you okay?”  
  
        _No._ “Yeah, just tired”  
  
        Johnny gets up and looks at his boyfriend, smiling at him and walking up to him to give him a hug. He doesn’t return it, but he appreciates it.  
  
        “Today was a great day” Taeil says, oblivious to Johnny’s pain. Or Johnny was a great actor and he should pursue an acting career, or Taeil was still not used to Johnny’s real expressions. Ten would’ve known in a matter of seconds that Johnny just lied to him.  
  
        Taeil is speaking, talking, sharing, something Johnny wanted to avoid right now but he would’ve been an asshole, and he doesn’t want to be one, so he listens. Well, he pretends to listen. Taeil’s tone is cheerful, he’s happily talking something that happened at his recording studio, something about releasing another album soon. But Johnny is not really paying attention, he instead goes to the fridge to grab a bottle of water and turns around in time to fake a really convincing smile. Taeil got even happier.  
  
        Johnny sits on the counter, turning pilot mode on and letting his mind wonder yet again on what just happened five minutes ago. What was the point of Ten going to him? Again, how the hell did he know he was there? He wondered if there could be a slight chance that today’s events would’ve ended differently. Most probably, no.  
  
        Suddenly, a pair of lips crash against his, and he’s taken aback, obviously not even paying attention on the older with his eyes for the last two minutes. Taeil moves back, embarrassed ‘cause Johnny’s surprise was kind of obvious, and his cheeks get red.  
  
        _Cute_ , Johnny thinks.  
  
        But it’s not the kind of cute he thought like he did with Ten, when he wanted to kiss that cuteness off his expression and end things in the bedroom. It was more like the kind when Mark tried to do some aegyo and failed miserably.  
  
        “Sorry” Taeil apologizes. “I got carried away.”  
  
        “It’s okay” Johnny answers, forcing a little smile. “I just didn’t expect it.”  
  
        “I can see that” Taeil answers, giggling. “So? How was your day?”  
  
        _Like shit._ “It went fine” Johnny notices the excitement in Taeil’s expression. “What?”  
  
        “Nothing” Taeil answers, trying to hide away the smile. “Just continue”  
  
        “I finished” Johnny laughs,  forcibly. “What is it?”  
  
        “It’s just…” Taeil breathes in and out, nervously, laughing weirdly. He was too excited. “I’m just really happy. Everything is how is supposed to be.” Taeil covers his cheeks with his hands for a moment to feel his cheeks getting hot, and then takes Johnny’s hands. “I have this amazing job, I’m releasing this amazing song, and I can share it with my amazing boyfriend.” Taeil intertwines his fingers with Johnny’s. “Who happens to be the greatest CEO of all time” he laughs “but don’t tell mine that I said that.”  
  
        Johnny laughs with Taeil, but he doesn’t mean it. He’s currently feeling the guilt stacking up on his back. He was the worst boyfriend of all the history of boyfriends. His boyfriend was telling him how fortunate he was to have him, while he’s thinking about his ex. Terrific.  
  
        “What’s wrong?” Taeil asks, concerned.  
  
        “Huh?” Johnny doesn’t realize he’s crying until Taeil wipes off his tear. “Oh, it’s nothing” he says, trying to rub his eyes, but this only makes things worst. His words get cut by a sudden sob and there are more tears on the way down. “Oh, fuck, why am I like this?” he says, trying to laugh it off and walk to their bedroom.  
  
        Taeil stops him, pushing him gently against the wall and kissing off Johnny’s tears. “It’s okay” he whispers, kissing the top of his cheeks. “I know there are things you still can’t share” he kisses his forehead “and even though we’ve been together for almost 8 months now, I understand” he kisses his nose. “I’ll always be here for you.” he finishes on Johnny’s lips.  
  
        Johnny is feeling a lot of things to use a single word to name them all. Sadness because this is not how things were supposed to be, shock because Taeil is doing everything he has been asking for (though he wasn’t actually asking it to him), angry to himself because Taeil clearly deserved better, guilt because while he’s parting his mouth to let Taeil’s tongue go inside, he’s picturing Ten kissing him instead.  

 

* * *

  
        Ten lets the door shut for itself behind him while he takes his shoes off, hearing the microwave finishing its timing. He drops his things on one corner and dumbly walks to the kitchen, as it was where the only light was coming from and probably where his boyfriend was. He walked the way back with his closed umbrella, so he was dropping wet.  
  
        “Hey” he greets with a little smile.  
  
        “Hey” his boyfriend answers in return, giving him his back, busily preparing his ramen.  
  
        “How was your day?” Ten asks. He knows Taeyong had a rough day, he could see the tension on his shoulders.  
  
        “Probably one of the worsts I’ve ever had” he laughs, but it sounds bitter. _Me too_ , Ten thinks. But his day was probably nothing compared to Taeyong’s, he knows that. “Today I lost a patient.” Taeyong whispers, and Ten freezes. He never knows how to console his boyfriend when that happened. Taeyong turns around, and Ten can see the frown on his face.  
  
        “She was only 4 years old, fuck” Taeyong groans, mixing the ramen with a little too much of force.  
  
        Ten never knew how to console the older, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t try.  
  
        “At least she’s not feeling more pain now, being in a better place.” Ten didn’t quite believe in heaven, but he believed that there had to be a place where people went to rest, people like that girl. Taeyong nods. He kind of thinks the same as Ten, but he doesn’t want to talk about beliefs now. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
        Taeyong shakes his head, and Ten looked down at his fingers. It was not an awkward silence, but a depressed one.  
  
        “How was your day?” Taeyong asks, devouring the ramen. “Oh, have you eaten?”  
  
        Ten shakes his head. “No, but I’m not really hungry. And it went fine.” _if by ‘fine’ I mean like crap_.  
  
        Taeyong nods. He knows Ten is hiding something, but he doesn’t push it. He never does, and that’s what Ten loved about Taeyong. He didn’t treat Ten like a child, he had problems of his own to be preoccupied on Ten’s, or always asking what was wrong with him; he didn’t do that. Taeyong didn’t look out for Ten as much as Johnny did, and it kind of made him feel good, not feeling like a burden to the older, like he used to feel with Johnny.  
  
        “I’ll go change” Ten announces, and Taeyong nods, absorbed on his ramen.  
  
        He strips off his clothes on their closet, slowly, throwing the wet clothes onto the basket. He sighs. The fight with Johnny was still lingering on his memory, and even if he tried not to think about it, he still did. Not even Taeyong’s problem could make him forget the older. He kind of felt like he was cheating on him, it’s not like he did anything with Johnny since they broke up, but he still felt something for him. He always did.  
  
        It was easier to ignore the feelings before. When the days weren’t as gray as this one, when things felt better, when he didn’t fight with Johnny in the night and he hid it from Taeyong. He’s getting into some bad shit now— no, he was already into it, he was just re-living it.  
  
        Before he could get into his a dry shirt, he hears sobs from the kitchen, and he goes back, worried. Taeyong was resting his hands on the counter, crying over his ramen and letting all the tears get into it. He was crying really hard, the hardest Ten has seen before in his whole life.  
  
        “What happened?” Ten asks, throwing his shirt somewhere (he doesn’t look) and hurrying up to Taeyong. He tried to say something, something about the girl doesn’t deserving to die, about _‘I should’ve tried harder’_ and Ten hugs him, feeling every tear falling on his shoulders as Taeyong’s arm hugged back Ten’s naked torso.  
  
        Taeyong was perfect.

        Taeyong understands him, Taeyong gives him space when he needs some, Taeyong is there to embrace him when he needs it too, and right now Taeyong needed comforting. And the only thing Ten knew, was that Taeyong deserved some. Ten didn’t deserve Taeyong, he didn’t deserve no one at all, but he should at least do something right today. So he lets the older vent out in sobs on his shoulder.  
  
        This somehow just makes him feel worse. Taeyong was everything he asked for, everything he wanted in a partner, but he was just missing one single thing. He wasn’t Johnny. Of course, even when his boyfriend is crying all over him, Ten manages to make a space for Johnny on his mind.  
  
        Taeyong’s sobs die at some point, and there’s only the sound of his nose and the rain outside. He raises his head, leveling it with Ten’s, and he looks right at the younger’s eyes. Ten wonders if Taeyong can see his guilt, and a part of him wishes he does. Taeyong lowers down, and kisses Ten. _Then he didn’t see it._  
  
        Ten corresponds the kiss, a bit afraid of where this was leading. He felt Taeyong hot, and it was certainly not because he could probably be sick; Taeyong’s never sick. So when Taeyong passes his hand over Ten’s clothed erection (when did that get up?), he confirms what the older wanted to do.  
  
        He didn’t refuse. He kind of needed it too, but this was mostly for Taeyong. Taeyong who was more than Ten could deserve, Taeyong who laughed at his bad jokes, Taeyong who liked to spend those rare free afternoons with Ten on the apartment, Taeyong who was intelligent, Taeyong who was a doctor and could save him from most things, Taeyong who was perfect, Taeyong who wasn’t Johnny. _Fuck_.  
  
        He gets aroused more by the thought of Johnny, and the guilt just stacks up, but he’s too horny to pay attention to that. Taeyong bites his lower lip, and pushes Ten back until they hit the fridge. Ten isn’t wearing a shirt, so he shivers over the coldness of the fridge, Taeyong giggles and apologizes. He takes off his shirt, and makes sure to not take much time on that, going back to Ten’s neck and down, biting on his collarbone and making the younger moan.  
  
        Ten let's Taeyong fuck him over the counter. That was a first. He comes with Johnny’s vivid picture on his mind, and the guilt starts to mean something when his orgasm vanishes. There’s a single tear going down Ten’s right eye, but Taeyong doesn’t acknowledges it, too busy kissing Ten’s chest, murmuring ‘thank you’s. Yeah. this was for Taeyong after all, he should feel good for that, for ending Taeyong’s unhappiness with some sex.  
  
        Taeyong lifts Ten up, and lies him down on the bed, starting to kiss him again. Ten thinks Taeyong wants round two, but when Taeyong tells him he’s taking a shower and doesn’t invite him, he takes that as a sign that he doesn't.  
  
        “What time is it?” Ten asks while Taeyong looked for clean clothes.  
  
        “Uhm? Eh… a little past 2AM.” Taeyong answers, getting inside the bathroom and closing the door behind him.  
  
        Ten gets up, cleaning his cum off his chest, picking up the clean shirt he threw away before and looking for his cellphone in his bag. It was time. He was right on time to send his message, such message that Jaehyun begged for him to stop sending, but it was more than a habit now. He didn’t even knew if his messages were reaching, but he still sent them.

 

* * *

  
        Johnny is trying to sleep. Well, not really, he’s trying to not drift his thoughts back to Ten, so he stares at Taeil’s things that were lying on the desk a few meters away from him. He wonders where did the older bought that notebook. It looked pretty.  
  
        _Ten would’ve liked it._  
  
        _Fuck._  
  
        He groans, and Taeil moves around behind him, completely asleep. He eyes the older for a moment and goes back to his internal monologue. He was weirdly feeling alright. Not sad, not happy, not… anything. Just… feeling —what? he doesn't know. He was serene. The sound of the rain outside made him feel calm, something he didn’t feel nowadays. Relaxed.  
  
        There’s a buzzing sound, and Johnny internally curses at his phone. Why did he even had a phone? Fuckin— oh. He looks at the clock, sitting besides his phone which is now quiet. It was past 2AM. He forgot about it.  
  
        Johnny takes his phone, eyes Taeil on the other side (again), and clicks on his phone, receiving the brightness of it not in a great way.  
  
        “Oh fuck me” he curses a little loud, but Taeil doesn’t flinch. He lowers the brightness at the speed of light before it leaves him blind, and waits for his eyes to adjust to it. He clicks on his messages. Of course.

  
I’m sorry  
**\- Ten**

   
        He looks at the date. He sighs. He erases the message and lies his phone besides the clock, adjusting his pillow under his head. It's been officially a year since he and Ten broke up.  
  
        Taeil’s arm slips around Johnny’s waist, back hugging him with care.

        He receives the same message every night. He erases it every night.  
  
        And he whispers _me too_ , every night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will explain everything, bear with me lol


	3. curiosity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doyoung wants to know. 
> 
> Johnny wants to vent.
> 
> Ten needs to think.

        It’s time-consuming for Doyoung. Think about Johnny’s problem, that is.

        He had a fight with Jaehyun last night because of it, he couldn’t get high with Jaehyun because of the fight and he couldn’t sleep well because all of it kept him awake. He woke up this morning, expecting to not care anymore, but it was still there, the weird need to know what was going on. Why was Jaehyun refusing to talk about that? He wasn’t that eager to know before, but it seemed like everyone else knew but him, and ironically he was the only one who seemed to care.

        He pestered Hansol the whole morning, wanting to know about Johnny’s problem. He didn’t give up, not even when Hansol threw at him his glass of water - _thanks_ , he had said with a smile, _in fact I was feeling thirsty_ , and Hansol rolled his eyes.-, that didn’t stop him. Even if he was angry. And no, it had nothing to do with the fact that Jaehyun wasn’t answering his texts or calls, of course it had nothing to do with that.

        Then, it hit him. The best idea to corner Hansol. Steal the wire that connects his laptop to the speakers.

        It wasn’t really **_the best_ ** idea, but it was the best in that situation, and he was desperate.

        Hansol had looked up for Doyoung in the three floors two times, finding him in the big singing room (what the? But he did searched there) sitting in the middle of the room with the lights shut but one, which was lighting him up. He would’ve looked imposing, but his face was ruining it. He could never look scary with that rabbit-like-face.

        “I don’t have time for this” Hansol groans, stretching his arm towards the younger. “Give me the wire”

        “No”

        “Doyoung!”

        “I wanna know why is Johnny hyung like that!” Doyoung shouts, losing his serious expression and standing up.

        “Why? It’s not your problem, let it be” Hansol answers, getting more irritated by the second.

        “Because someone needs to care!” Doyoung answers, and Hansol sighs.

        It’s not that Hansol didn’t notice or care about Johnny’s mood these past few days, he was just trying to give his boss a break, some space. If Johnny needed to talk, sort anything out by chatting with him, then he’ll let Johnny decide that; but until then, he was just going to give support by little pats on the back and reassuring smiles.

        “I care” Hansol says this time more calm, “I’ll take care of him, so just give it back”

        “No” Doyoung folds his arms “I wanna help too”

        Hansol sighs. He could convince the younger to mind his own business by sitting on him for a few minutes -cause Hansol was obviously stronger than Doyoung. But a part of him wants to let him know, as the younger could actually be some help, so he says “fine”, and Doyoung’s expression lights up, because he didn’t think he could actually convince him. “Later though, cause I really need that wire now to practice with the pups.”

        Doyoung chuckles. It’s the first time Hansol calls them out loud like that. 

        “What are they doing?” he asks, looking for the wire hidden inside the piano.

        “I told them to play a game and the loser would have to dance to a girl group” Hansol chuckles “I bet Donghyuck lost on purpose” Doyoung hands him the wire, and Hansol hits his arm.

        “Ow! That hurt!” Doyoung cries in pain.

        “The next time you do this, your arm won’t be the only part of your body that’s hurting.” he mutters, serious, and Doyoung thinks he could take some intimidating classes from him.

 

* * *

 

        “Tells me I didn’t do anything wrong by calling you last night” Jaehyun begs.

        Ten chuckles.

        Last night he was stuck, really stuck on the choreo. He tried coming up with a dance for more than two hours, but to no avail. It was getting to him, the stress, the thoughts, Johnny. He actually didn’t even want to dance anymore at that point. He only wanted to lay down and sort his thoughts out, but he couldn’t do that in the dance room; if he was in the dance room, he was there to dance, not to think. So he was in his way out to a bar when Jaehyun called him.

 

_‘Johnny’s here’ Jaehyun says, rushed, and Ten laughs._

_‘What do you want me to do about it?’ his voice is trembling and he hopes the younger doesn’t notice._

_'Hm.. come? maybe?’_

_'Why?’_

_‘It’s obvious that you’re not okay hyung.’_

_'When have I been?’ Ten laughs again, but he’s the only one._

 

        Jaehyun hanged up, telling him the address and saying that he should really consider it, and he didn’t. But his body had other plans. He walked his way over the restaurant as if they were moved by other kind of force, and he didn’t even think about what he was going to say when he sees the older. Maybe nothing. Maybe he’ll see Johnny, see that he’s happy and walk away, somehow letting a weight of tension go away too. But it looked like Johnny was expecting him, cause when he spots him with an empty soju bottle, the older was already looking at him.

        They were not okay. They were never okay. But it was easier to say that they were, to tell each other that they could still be friends, even after the break up. Ten, _only_ friends with Johnny, huh. Who would’ve guessed that?

        He wanted to say that if he wasn’t with Johnny romantically, then he didn’t want to be part of his life, not at all. But it was a lie. At last, he was the one who caused this and who even said that they should still be friends. Though it didn’t feel like they were friends, the mere thought of ‘friends with Johnny’ was soothing, sort of.

        “You did well, Jaehyun”

        And he did, ‘cause Ten was getting over the older after last night’s events. Or that’s what he repeated to himself all night long, like a mantra.

        “So… did you talk?” Jaehyun asks after a few seconds of quiet.

        “Kinda”

        “About…?”

        “Nothing really. But it was relieving to see him after so long, in a way.” Ten answers, playing with his water bottle with his feet, like if it was a soccer ball. “I think I can get over him now” he wanted to believe that, and maybe if Jaehyun thought that too, it’d be easier to do so.

        “Hyung… but he’s your soulmate.” Jaehyun whispers, and he sounds like a little 6 year old believing that the argument was acceptable.

        “But he’s got a boyfriend” Ten answers. "What do I do about that?"

        “And you too… right?” Jaehyun reminds him, weirded out that he mentioned Johnny’s first.

 _Fuck_. “And I do too, yeah, right” Ten sighs and Jaehyun follows.

        “How are things going with Taeyong?”

 _Well, not good, because he’s not Johnny._ “Fine, nothing special either. He’s got the same problems at the hospital and I’m trying to be a good boyfriend” Ten explains.

        Ten hangs up with the excuse that he needs to work on the dance, and though it was actually true, he wasn’t really hanging up to do that just yet.

        He needed to get to a conclusion on his own, figure things out on his inside, figure what did he want to do with Taeyong… with Johnny. Based on what happened yesterday, he won’t get any answers by talking to either of them, not now.

_“Fix up whatever the fuck is wrong with you before coming up to me” Johnny groans._

        “You have always been so wise, Seo Johnny” Ten chuckles, sitting on the ground with flexed legs and his head looking down at the floor between them.

        It was time to do what he was avoiding this past year. Sit down, and talk it through with himself.

 

* * *

 

        “Pick up, pick up, pick up.” Doyoung begs, probably digging up a circle on the floor with his feet as he’s walking around.

        “Hello, it’s Jaehyun, sorry that I can’t pick up right now but I’ll make sure to call you lat-”

        “Ugh!” Doyoung hangs up, ready to throw his phone across the room but the price of his rage will probably be more than he can handle, financially speaking.

        It’s past 5PM, the room is empty; he finished his task of assigning new songs for the next two weeks for the trainees a long time ago, and he has so much time to spare now. He was calling Jaehyun to apologize at first, but now he’s only doing it to scream at him. _This is ridiculous_ , he thinks. Their fight wasn’t even that big to ignore the other’s calls like this.

        He feels his heart ache, scared that Jaehyun could be like everybody else. He didn’t take abandonment very good, and right now, the feelings of being abandoned once again were starting to kick in. He felt like hugging himself and make a little ball of warmness where no one could come in and there could be only he and himself.

        And this is when Johnny’s problem kick in. He saw a part of himself in the older. He did know about feeling depressed, feeling like you’re living your life in autopilot mode, and Johnny was like that. He pretended all his smiles and Doyoung knew that. The art of staring at someone gave him the capacity to know if someone is forcing an expression, and Johnny forced them all.

        He just wonders why was Hansol leaving him like that. In his eyes, Hansol didn’t care much, and there ought to be a reason why.

        It’s like his thoughts were read by someone else, as Hansol opens the door and searches for Doyoung. He’s sitting in a corner, with his phone plugged in the charger. Hansol spots him in a second, and frowns.

        “Whatcha doing there?” Doyoung points at his phone, and Hansol nods. “Come to the roof, it’s time”

        Doyoung leaves his phone behind and follows the older up to the roof. His hands were sweating. He was finally going to know. To know why his boss’ smile was taken away, by who. He was imagining things, maybe that Johnny’s mother had cancer- no, that Johnny had a beating problem and-, no, no, that Johnny’s dog had gone away (does he even own one?), but he wishes none of those were true. He was actually expecting something simple, something that would let him help the older, but a part of him was telling him that he’s getting into some complicated stuff.

        He walks behind Hansol, and the cold air of November hits Doyoung when they go outside. He shivers for a moment, tightening the coat around his body. He looks back at the side of the roof where Hansol walked to, and he sees Johnny’s back. Doyoung is about to walk back inside, afraid that Johnny will probably scold them, but Johnny turns around, and smiles. It’s a little one and it lasts only for half a second, but Doyoung knows it was there.

        “Come” it’s only one word, and he turns around. Looking back at the sunset again.

        Doyoung walks slowly to Johnny’s empty side. They’re quiet for a minute, and he doesn’t know what they’re doing.

        “So what n-” Johnny shushes him, not parting away his gaze from the hiding sun. Hansol is looking too, but he looks rather bored.

        Johnny didn’t had the chance to look at the sunset yesterday because of the storm. But today’s weather was a lot better, and he was happy to see the sun part away once again. Its colors were reflecting in the sky, a purple-ish with pink, and Johnny feels happy, sincerely happy. But as always, this type of happiness only lasts for a couple of minutes. He doesn’t care though, these minutes were the highlight of his day.

        When the sun is finally gone, and the sky's getting darker by the second, Johnny takes out a cigarette box. He looks at both of his employees and offers a cigarette, both say no; so he takes out only one.

        “I didn’t know you smoke” Doyoung comments, surprised.

        “I don’t.” Johnny answers. “I just look at it.”

        "Why?" Doyoung asks before he could stop himself.

        Hansol angrily glances at him, ready to throw a curse but Johnny answers faster.

        "My dad died because of this." He laughs. "Can you believe it? How can a little tube kill a person... it looks so... harmless."

        "Because it's not only one little tube." Doyoung sighs, "it's a thousand of little tubes."

        Johnny titters, "I guess"

        "I'm sorry, by the way"

        “It's okay...” Johnny breaths heavily, still looking at the cigarette, moving it between his fingers. “What do you wanna know?” he looks at Doyoung.

        “Everything” he answers surely, not even thinking, and realization hits a little later “I-I mean if you wanna tell me o-of course ‘cause-”

        Johnny chuckles. “Yeah.” his smile is really pretty, and Doyoung can’t stop himself from staring. “I guess I’d help to tell the story completely, remember things.” his smiles dies, and he returns the cigarette back to the box. The box looks used, but all the cigarettes are new on its inside. The one that Johnny’s holding in his finger is the only one that’s worn off, always being played with before going back with his friends inside.

        Johnny’s day had been pretty much normal. He woke up, ran away before Taeil did and stuffed himself up with a lot of paperwork. It was a slow and quiet day since it was Saturday, but for Johnny, it was just one of the bunch.

        “You don’t have to tell him everything” Hansol protests. Doyoung forgot for a moment that he was there.

        The surprise Johnny had when Hansol told him about Doyoung’s curiosity made him feel really… flustered. He didn’t expect the younger to get interested on his problems, neither did he think about Doyoung actually noticing his faked behaviour. But there was a reason why Johnny hired him, and it was because Doyoung wasn’t self-centered. He cared, he have always had.

        He noticed Doyoung back in college, but he didn’t approach the younger. He figured the younger didn’t want him to. Doyoung used to leave cups of coffee when Johnny was napping in a vocal room, and Johnny didn’t realize this until a few weeks after he began doing it. He faked napping once, and caught the younger red handed, leaving yet again a cup besides his arm. Johnny wanted to befriend him, but Doyoung always avoided him, running away from the room every time he walked in.

        It has been a few years since that, but even now, Johnny could see Doyoung’s expression, like back then, wanting to run away, but no one’s forcing Doyoung to stay, to hear problems that doesn’t involve him at all. And he’s still staying.

        “I want to” Johnny reassures. “I want to have a new opinion. It’s not like I don’t like yours, it’s just that you suck at giving an advice.” Johnny chuckles, and Hansol rolls his eyes.

        “So…” Doyoung says, waiting for anyone to finish it for him.

        Johnny looks at him. He’s glad that Doyoung is worried about him, but it’s a thought that he’s not going to share. He was dying to tell someone else, anyone really, just to have a new perspective. And here was Doyoung, scared but still interested. Johnny feels too tired to analyze the younger more, so he doesn’t.

        “Here it goes.”


	4. bottled up feelings are silent killers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a problem named Ten, 
> 
> whose problem wants to leave unnamed, 
> 
> even if it costs him his relationship with Johnny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did double update, so if you haven't read Chapter 3, please do so, to avoid confusion with this chapter's beginning ^^
> 
> This chapter was particularly hard to write... I already had the whole plot fixed when I started writing but, it just got hard lol. And it's really long too, sorry for that. I took a lot of things out, and it still ended up really long.

“His name is Ten. The name of my problem, you could say.” Johnny laughs.

“Things with Ten were always… different. He always had this need to do something new, and I loved it. I loved every single time he pushed me to the edge of things. ‘Cause he was always there, y’know? Doing things with someone it’s a lot much better than doing it alone. And with Ten, I was never alone.

“But I don’t know if I can say the same for him, sadly. He came to South Korea a lot younger than I did, I think it was when he started high school. Being around new people all the time at such young age didn’t actually give him a good outcome. He needed something constant in his life besides his parents who have always lived in Thailand, and to find that, he tried hard to fit in.

“When you meet Ten, you have this… urge, to take care of him. He’s the most mature person I’ve known, but he tends to make mistakes. To act carelessly, like a child even. When the damage is done, this always hit him in the worst ways. He doesn’t like being a burden, no one does, but he was more sensitive about it than everyone else. He shuts himself, in a place where some times I couldn’t go into.

“I didn’t know something was off until things were already on the edge of falling, like always.”

 

* * *

 

**July, 2015**

        There’s this voice in Ten’s inside.

        Sometimes this voice is loud, sometimes it’s not.

        Sometimes Ten curls around the comfort of this voice, the voice that has been with him since day one. Sometimes he hates this voice to the bone, wishing for it to disappear. But it can’t go away, he can’t simply shut that voice, which goes by the name of conscious.

        Though he’d like to. He’d like to press mute every time he felt like he did something wrong. Like now.

        He doesn’t really know what he did wrong, but Johnny is looking at him, mad. It’s just one of those nights, where Ten simply can’t click with anyone, and everything he does is a mistake.

        What is it now? Did he forgot to pick up something? No… About a dinner? Also, no. Anniversary? No. It’s probably something trivial, but everything that’s trivial seemed to matter a lot nowadays.

        Then, he sees it.

        Johnny’s desktop is wet. But it’s not a ‘I slipped my coffee’ wet. It’s a ‘I forgot to close the windows before going out’ wet.

        “It’s okay” Johnny lies, and it’s not only showing on his tone but every expression and motion he’s doing, trying to calm himself. “I’ll figure something out” Johnny had important papers there, papers like a contract with a distributor that could help Johnny’s company on getting bigger, but this, Ten didn’t know; clearly, not until Johnny explained it in a whisper.

        There’s always something he doesn’t know, and he wonders why.

        Did people not trust him? Or was it pure coincidence that everyone knew about something but him?

        His father was tipsy one night, when Ten was younger. Probably thirteen. And he talked and went on explaining with a bitter laugh about how a pain in the ass Ten has always been, as if it was in his nature; to be a bother. Ten wouldn’t have take this serious, his father liked to joke in many weird ways he never really understood, but his laughter died after those words. When Ten asked him about it the next morning; his father didn’t know what he was talking about. Or he was lying- either way; drunken words are sober thoughts.

        It was a stupid matter, like everything else, and he could just forget about it.

        It wasn’t a huge deal at first, but Ten got obsessed with this memory.

        The thought started to eat him from the inside. Reminding him that he’s only a bother, like his father once said- and it clicked. Every time he did something wrong and people instead of raging at him, they only sigh, telling him not to worry about it, even though it was his mistake to begin with. His father had never said his harsh opinion until then, and under the influence of alcohol. So, could everyone else be hiding theirs too? The memory was always there in those exact moments, and it made sense for Ten.

        Just like right now. Johnny is mad, he can see that. But he’s not screaming, he’s not showing it. He knows the older too well, and he knows when Johnny tries to contain his anger, to hide it under the carpet.

        “What are you doing?” Johnny snaps at the sound of Ten moving things around.

        “Looking for my keys” Ten mutters, sucking up the tears that were threatening to fall.

        “Why?”

        “I’m going out”

        “Ten” Johnny sighs, frustrated, “I told you it’s okay” Johnny tries to place his hands on Ten’s shoulders, but the younger jerks at the touch.

        “It is not okay!” Ten screams. “I know it’s not, and if you’re mad just freaking tell me! Yell at me!”

        “Yes, Ten, I’m mad, but why the fuck should I yell at you?!” the rage is slowly going out, and Johnny tries to contain it, but it’s too late.

        “Because that’s what you’re supposed to do!” Ten answers, hiding the keys inside his fist. “To yell, to complain, to tell me if something’s wrong ‘cause if you don’t do how am I supposed to know your feelings?”

        Things haven’t been well for a while. It’s not like they were fighting all day every day, but Ten knows Johnny is slowly getting sick of him. Johnny has been coming late home, and shuts himself in his office before going to sleep. He has seen this before, he has lived this with past boyfriends who slowly started to drift away, and Ten is hating the fact that this might end too.

        It’s not though. Johnny has only been really stressed with work, and he has tried to avoid the younger to not make problems between them, but this might’ve done one without wanting to.

        There’s nothing Johnny can say right now, he’s too exhausted from work and having yet the same discussion with Ten about his insecurities couldn’t come in a worst moment.

        “I’m sorry..” Ten whispers “I guess I’m getting a little bit nuts, huh?” he half laughs, but Johnny doesn’t get the joke.

        “Ten-”

        Johnny tries to approach him a second time, but Ten needs to be alone, so he walks back. “I’m still going out for a bit, I need some air.”

        “Let me get my jacket, I’ll go wi-”

        “No, I can go alone. I’m not a child Youngho.”

        Johnny looks up at Ten’s expression, and it’s so cold. Ten rarely calls him like that, and it’s only when he’s super hella serious, like now.

        Ten storms out the apartment whispering to Johnny a ‘don’t follow me’, and for the first time, Johnny doesn’t. He normally tries to follow Ten when he walks away, even though the younger is way faster than him. Today, he doesn’t even try. He sits down on the chair and hopes this isn’t one of those nights where Ten doesn’t come all night.

        A little part of him knows it is.

  
  
  


        Ten went out saying he wanted some air, and he did. He breaths in the contaminated cold air of Seoul like if it was air from the countryside, and begins walking. Where? Anywhere. 

        He didn’t take a warm coat on his way out, too preoccupied with Johnny not following to notice how cold can outside be. But the wind is making him regret doing it, and with each step, he wants to go back. He doesn’t. Johnny needs a break from Ten, and so does Ten (needs a break from himself). There’s always too much stuff going in his mind, he would like to not think at all for once. To not get worried about anyone.

        Normally when Ten doesn’t come back home, it’s because he spends the night in his dance studio, dancing his frustration out, or at Jaehyun’s, killing some online players on his Call of Duty. But today, he doesn’t want to neither of them. For the first time, he changes the course of his mid-night journey to a nightclub not too far away from his dance studio.

        He just wants to drink a little bit, and he repeats that a few times as he walks inside. He doesn’t expect to see any familiar faces as he hasn’t gone to a club in ages- which can be weird, since he’s a dancer, but this has a reason, and the reason has a name. Johnny.

        It’s not Johnny fault, Ten repeats. Johnny would like to come as much as Ten, but work is taking the best of him with the first comeback of his first male group. Ten always carries some resentment though, that he should still come alone but there’s some unspoken rule in their relationship of not doing it; but as soon as he walks inside, that resentment banishes.

        It’s risky.

        People there is flirting, dancing, sweating and too drunk to care about anything they’re doing. He sees two guys in a fight on one side of the club, and the security runs to them to stop it. Ten should not be there. Every single thing he sees is screaming ‘danger!’, but in this exact moment, he doesn’t care much.

        He won’t do anything stupid, he just came for a drink.

  
  
  


        Johnny walks up from the chair into the kitchen, trying to clean whatever that was dirty; and plays with an old rag with his hands for a few minutes, sitting on the island in the middle. His stomach is grumbling, his eyes are closing and his mind is wandering around the question of _what now?_ He wants to eat, he wants to sleep, but he mostly wants to know how to help Ten in these moments where he was in his worst moment.

        It’s obvious that Ten hides something, Johnny has known that since day one. But he has tried to not push it, letting the younger talk about it when he is ready. Johnny wonders when will that be. He can sense the younger’s insecurities, but as they haven’t been named yet, he doesn’t know what to do exactly. Being there for Ten sometimes isn’t enough.

        His phone vibrates on his sides, and Johnny turns around quickly, expecting to see Ten’s name on the little screen, but it’s not.

        It’s his mom.

        “Hey, mom, what’s up?” he greets in English, getting his tongue tangled with his saliva for a moment. He should speak more English these days.

        “Hey baby… how are you?” her voice is different. She normally calls all cheered up, sometimes she doesn’t even let him greet her first, already throwing at him any news she had. And she normally doesn’t call at... 11PM?

        Johnny looks back at his phone for a moment, weirded out. “Hm.. fine, but, isn’t it really early with you guys? Is everything okay?”

        “How’s my Ten?” she asks, avoiding the question. “Is he there? Say hi for me”

        “He’s fine too and no, he’s not here.” Johnny rubs his eyes with the hand that was holding the dirty rag, and he throws it away, disgusted. “But you didn’t answer my question mom, did something happen? Why are you calling me so early?”

        He hears his mom breath. She’s opening and closing her mouth, like a fish, unable to start talking.

        “What?” he asks, getting up.

        “Baby… something happened, but- I want you to stay calm.”

        A nervous laugh comes out of his mouth. “Mom, you’re scaring me”

        “Your- your father- we-we’re in the hospital. But he-he’s fine… it’s just that, he kind of…”

        “Kind of what, mom?”

        “He kind of had a heart attack last night, honey” Johnny hits his waist against the border of the island. He’s murmuring a ‘what’ while his mother explained, “you know how he likes to smoke a cigarette at nights and- well, yesterday he did, like usual, and- ah, to make things short, I called an ambulance right after and we’ve been here since last night, but he’s fin-”

        “Last night?! And why are you calling me until now?” johnny’s heart skipped a beat and he’s holding the dirty rag again with a trembling grip.

        “I-I was going to but- your father has been intubated since last night, and the doctors said to wait for him to pass the night, that it could be a good sign, and he did! He’s still intubated but- but that’s good Johnny!”

        “Mom…” he heard some sniffing through the phone, and he could guess she has been crying. “I’m coming.” Johnny walks to his room, getting a bag out of the closet and starts throwing clothes on it.

        “What?” she asks, surprised, “no, Johnny, you stay there, it’s fine, I just called you to let you kn-”

        “It’s my dad!” he answers, a little too loud. “I cannot not go mom, please.”

        “But what about your job, honey? You’re the boss, you just can’t-”

        “It’ll be fine” no it won’t, but Johnny didn’t give a crap about it now. (well, he did, but he could leave the vice president on charge for a few days running the company just fine, Johnny could handle the rough work all the way from America). “I’m getting on the next plane, just stay put for the next…”

        “10? 15 hours?” his mother sighs through the phone “honey, you don’t have to come”

        “No, I have to. He’s my dad, mom” Johnny tries to sound angry, but it somehow ends up like a cute nag.

        His mother giggles, but it only lasts for a few seconds. “Okay then, we’ll wait here. It’s not like he can go anywhere.”

        “Mom…”

        “Too soon? I’m sorry… I just want to- I don’t know…”

        Johnny stops on his track, holding a pair of boxers in his grip. He can’t think of the pain she must be going through, handling the shock and fear all by herself the entire night.

        “Just wait, okay? I’m on my way” he resumes his work, walking to the bathroom to take his toothbrush.

        “Okay, be careful, and I love you honey.”

        “I love you too.”

        Johnny hangs up, and leans on the sink. There’s a tear threatening him to fall, and he rubs his eye before it does. He has told his father many times to quit, but the old man didn’t want to listen. He imagines him. Lying on the bed with a tube down his throat and machines doing the work his body was supposed to do.

        Johnny turns around, and throws up on the sink. He washes his mouth right away, but the acid taste lingers on the insides of his cheeks and on top of his tongue.

        There’s too much to process now, and for a moment he forgot his previous problem: Ten. “shit” he hisses when he remembers the younger, and dials his number hastily. “Pick up, please”

        He hears the ‘beep’s with a shaking heart, and re-dials when his call hits voicemail.

        Ten cannot do this. He cannot ignore him now, not when Johnny needs him the most.

        The older tries a few more times, carried away with his task on packing the basic stuff, and calling him is starting to feel useless. He sits on the bed, and tries one last time.

        “Don’t do this, Ten” he passes a hand through his hair, and hopes the younger picks up this time.

        But this time, he doesn’t even hear anything. He goes directly to voicemail.

        Ten turned off his phone.

  
  


        Ten turns off his phone and gulps down the end of his beer. He looks for the bartender with his eyes and points at his empty bottle. In a few seconds, there’s a new beer sitting where the empty one was.

        He has been doing well so far. Keeping his promise of just drinking.

        A few girls and boys try to flirt with him, but one look and a few words and he scares them away. The alcohol has drained the little of joy he had inside, and he’s now looking like a loner, sitting with his only companion: his beer.

        It has been working out so far, the ‘let’s not think about Johnny’ task. The music, the people; even though he’s not literally engaged with his surroundings, it has been help enough to let his mind wander in useless topics.

        Someone sits besides him, and Ten is about to turn around and say some nasty stuff, obviously irritated by now, before he looks at the boy- at the _pretty_ boy sitting there eating some nuts. But the beauty of his jawline or smoky eyes are not what catches his eye. It’s the fact that he looks oddly familiar.

        It’s not hard for the pretty boy to notice Ten’s stare. “like what you s-” the old flirty line chokes on his throat with a nut as he notices Ten; who Ten _is_.

        Ten doesn’t budge neither he offers his own drink to help the dying pretty boy, he just keeps staring at him, trying to figure out when or where has he seen this boy. Such boy ends up stealing Ten’s beer and drinking from it.

        “What the fuck man!?” Pretty boy hisses while coughing.

        Ten frowns. “What the fuck… with what?”

        “I was choking, couldn’t you help?” Pretty boy sounds a little bit too mad, and it’s only because he’s getting nervous by the second. Ten doesn’t realize this. Maybe the alcohol (Which was a huge warning for him to get out now).

        He’s not in a perfect shape on his five senses, and this boy screams ‘danger!’ just like everything else did, but Ten only wanted to put a name to this face- if he even knew his name.

        He was awfully familiar it was starting to give Ten a headache.

        The stare is scaring pretty boy, and so Ten asks “have I seen you before?” before he goes away, probably for forever.

        Pretty boy was sipping his own drink now, and chokes again with the question. He coughs, and Ten only… stares.

        “Thanks” pretty boy mutters sarcastically after hitting his chest with his own hand, “And… you don’t remember me then?”

        “No, I don’t.”

        “Uhm…” Pretty boy fakes some thinking, playing nervously with his drink. “Do you remember saying… how was it? … ah! ‘You’re too handsome to be a doctor, but your face, is actually nothing special.’”

        “Like your surname” both of them say at the same time, and this makes pretty boy doctor laugh, making Ten realize who he was. But Ten is still processing the information.

        “Oh!” He exclaims a few seconds after and repeats “oh”  with a lower tone “what are you doing here? I thought doctors didn’t have time to party around”

        “We do” pretty doctor barks. “Once a month, maybe… but we do!” this cracks a little smile on Ten, and pretty doctor feels happy with himself for that. And a little red on his cheeks too.

        “How’s your arm? Did it heal we-”

        “Yeah”

        The conversation dies there, as Ten looks back at his beer and is preparing to leave any moment now. He just wanted to identify the pretty boy, who happened to be his doctor from two years ago. Pretty doctor’s hands are starting to get sweaty, looking at Ten finish his beer in a gulp.

        “My name is Taeyong” he says, and it’s like he announced it to a wall ‘cause Ten didn’t look back. Taeyong took it as a chance to keep speaking; he might regret this later (he’s regretting it now) but this is probably his only chance to do it. “That day… you came with another man…”

        He expects Ten to understand where the sentence was going to end, but it’s like he didn’t say anything at all. Being ignored like this felt way worse than embarrassing himself with his taken patient from two years ago.

        Ten gets up and takes out his wallet, looking for some bills to throw out.

        It’s not like he couldn’t forget about this cute foreign that came with an arm wound two years ago, of course not. He didn’t hope for him to come again with a minor injury and single, obviously. Taeyong wasn’t that selfish. (was he?)

        Taeyong has a pride, but in this moment in particular, the word ‘pride’ feels foreign in his dictionary.

        “Are you still together?” he finishes. Ten freezes, and Taeyong feels kind of satisfied to have a reaction on him. But Ten was only trying to identify the number on the bill from his wallet, and he hands some out, not knowing the amount.

        He looks at Taeyong though, and says “yeah, sorry” before walking out of the place.

        Taeyong feels like dying. Embarrassed to death and Ten probably didn’t even care. And this angers him. What kind of way of treating someone was this? He was no saint with his co-workers sometimes, but Taeyong helped _him_ two years ago! Saved his life! Well, his wound wasn’t life threatening, but if it was, he would’ve saved him for sure!

        Taeyong’s short internal monologue ends with his drink as he walks out of the place too, hoping that Ten didn’t take a cab by now.

        And no, he didn’t. He was walking down the road, ignoring the few cabs passing by and playing with a rock as he walked. Taeyong jogs to his side and Ten only looks at him for a moment, acknowledging his presence.

        “That’s no way to treat someone.” Taeyong complains, but it doesn’t come out as harsh as he wanted it to be.

        “Yeah? Oh… sorry.” They walk side by side, both looking at the ground. “I’m still in a relationship, though.”

        “Are you?” Ten stops on track, and turns around to look at pretty- no, Taeyong, looking at him, serious. Whatever that was Taeyong’s point with asking that, it was working.

        “Am I?” Ten repeats. “Uhm… we had a fight earlier but nothing that bad I thi-”

        He gets shut up by Taeyong’s lips, pressing against his. Is short, as the doctor steps back almost immediately but stays a few inches away from Ten’s mouth. Blame it on the alcohol, blame it on the throbbing feelings of all that things that happened today, but Ten doesn’t move when Taeyong leans down again, kissing him softly.

        It’s quite a weird feeling, being kissed by someone that you’re not supposed to be kissed by. Even though Ten is not corresponding the kiss, it feels wrong. He moves a few steps behind, and tries to clean away Taeyong’s scent off his lips. It doesn’t feel like it’s working.

        “If it’s nothing that bad, then why didn’t you stop me?” Taeyong asks, which is the same question Ten is asking to himself. Just, why?

        For now, he blames it on the alcohol yet again. Yeah. It must be that.

        Ten rests against a tree for some moments, and Taeyong gets near, again. His mouth is inches away from Ten’s, and he’s waiting; for anything. For Ten to push him, maybe even curse at him. But instead, Ten gulps, and Taeyong takes it as a green light.

        It started and ended there, on what could’ve been Ten’s worst kiss. Worst in terms of what he was feeling inside; the urge to stop time and think for a moment, as he was doing all this for only one reason, not wanting to think anymore. Taeyong was a good kisser, Ten would give him some points on that, but Ten doesn’t have the urge to tangle his arms around his neck or push his tongue inside Taeyong’s mouth. Taeyong does though, and Ten stays there, being kissed, lifeless.

        It was a trial, Ten says to himself on his way back. Alone.

        It was a trial on whether he was so much of an asshole to cheat on Johnny or not; though it’s not like he didn’t do it already. But no, he realized he wasn’t as fucked up as he thought he was.

        Did he enjoy the kiss? Yeah. A part of him did, the part that wasn’t freaking out over everything, the part that didn’t actually give a fuck of anything that happened today. The part that was present when Ten went into the apartment and found no one waiting for him, the part that made him think ‘Johnny must be out’, made him feel relief and not check on the drawers to notice some of Johnny’s belongings missing, the part that didn’t want to check his phone either and the part that pushed him onto the mattress, falling into a deep sleep.

        He felt guilty when he woke up and realized that Johnny didn’t come back. This was a first, where their places changed and he’s now the one on the apartment waiting for the other.

        Last night’s events kicked in as soon as the hangover did, and Ten is still naming it as a trial. ‘Cause he had no intentions on cheating, on finding his pretty doctor there or kissing him. It’d be a night that he’d keep to himself, and hide it in the ‘DON’T OPEN’ box, though the name of it is purely decoration, as he’s finding himself opening it more than he’d like to.

        This memory will probably eat him alive, just like the other one just did and made him into the one he’s now. Trying hard and yet failing and falling flat onto his ass on every attempt he did to handle things on his own.

        He always thought Johnny deserved better than him. Even on their first months of dating or when Johnny proposed him to live together. But Ten was covering his insecures, trying to hide them on this box and show off to himself that he could be a great boyfriend, one that will bring nothing more than happiness to Johnny.

        But his mistakes sadly mean more. He remembers more all those moments where Johnny sighs in frustration and tries to hide it from Ten, more than the ones where Johnny hugs Ten with affection, whispering a ‘I’m glad I met you’ on his ear.

        Ten goes to the kitchen, and prepares a cereal while his phone is turning on and last night notifications start to pop up. He turns on the television, tuning on the forecast and slowly scrolling through the messages.

        He’s holding the bowl with one hand while the other has the phone, and when he reads Johnny’s text that he took a plane to Chicago to see his father as he had a heart attack last night, the bowl naturally falls onto the ground, breaking into pieces.

        It takes him almost 15 minutes to collect all the things he needed for the plane, his passport, visa, a change of clothes and enough cash to pay for the plane ticket -leaving the broken bowl forgotten on the ground-. He’s about to lock the door when Johnny picks up Ten’s call, the call Ten forgot he was making; rushed to have everything with him.

        “Hello?”

        “Hey,” Ten answers, hurriedly placing the phone between his shoulder and ear “I’m on my way to the airport, I don’t know when’s the next flight to Los Angeles but I think there might be o-”

        “No” Johnny cuts him off “Don’t come”

        “It’s okay, I’m already on my way and-”

        “No, I mean it Ten”

        The keys fall off Ten’s fingers and he needs to take his phone in hand, as his shoulder was starting to cramp.

        “I don’t want you to come” it comes out way too cold, but it’s out there, and Ten is speechless “I just came down from my plane to Chicago, I haven’t even seen my dad yet and… I need to be there for my mom. She’s heartbroken, Ten.”

        “But who’s gonna be there for you?” Ten asks in a whisper.

        “No one” Johnny answers, and sighs. It’s a direct indirect, and Ten gets it “I’ll be okay, I’m strong, I can handle this on my own”

        “I still wanna go” Ten says, and repeats it a second time, more strongly. “I wanna be th-”

        “But I want to be alone, Ten” Ten can feel the distant over his tone, and he wonders if this is any how related to what happened yesterday night. “I’m tired"

        “From what?”

        “Fro-from everything”

        It was.

        “I just need some rest, I’ll still be working a little from here but I guess being with my family will be some healing time.”

        “When are you coming back?”

        “I dunno… in a week, maybe. Depends on how my dad is by then.”

        “Okay..” Ten rests his forehead against the closed door, and breathes deeply, trying to push back the tears.

        “Okay.”

        He was mad, Ten figures. Ten wanted a break last night and fucked things up by turning off the phone. It was yet again another mistake he made, and Johnny wasn’t sharing his anger about it. Wasn’t raging like he’s supposed to.

        Johnny doesn’t ask where was he last night, neither does he say ‘i love you’ when he hangs up as he usually does; Ten notices this, but says nothing.

        He didn’t feel like saying it either.

  
  


        The week turned into two, as Johnny’s father dies a day after he got out of intubation.

 _Complications_ , Johnny said through the phone, he didn’t want to explain and Ten didn’t want to push it. Though he did mention on still going to Chicago, to Johnny, for the funeral. But the older was yet again not budging, saying that things were pretty depressed and heated, trying to avoid to say that Ten would be more of a burden than a help down there. Ten knew, even if Johnny didn’t say it.

        He also knew Johnny wasn’t the same. From the moment he walked through the door of their apartment (‘cause Johnny didn’t let him pick him up at the airport), he knew his Johnny wasn’t quite there. Johnny went to take a shower while Ten cooked something he rehearsed through the two weeks Johnny wasn’t there. Bibimbap.

        The older was probably craving something Korean, he guessed. And he did it perfectly, adding a bit of spice from Thailand even though Johnny wasn’t a big fan of spicy food. It was well done, and he was satisfied. It (only) took him an hour.

        “Johnn-” Ten walks through the door, and shuts up when he sees the older over the bed with the blanket on him, sleeping soundless. He gives himself a moment to stare at him, sitting on the other side of the bed.

        Johnny looked tired, way more tired that he ever was. His soon to be beard wasn’t properly shaved and the bags under his eyes were darker than before. He noticed his hair being larger than before, and his cheeks had died down a bit. Ten had to stop the urge from passing his hand over them.

        He laid down besides him, lowering his head at the same level of him. Johnny arched his eyebrows, frowning for a moment before going back to his rest expression, and Ten wonders what could the older be dreaming.

        He did some thinking while Johnny was gone. He was going to forget about what happened that night, put his insecurities aside and care for the older, as he was in more pain than he was. He didn’t tell Jaehyun about any of this (yet), having his opinion as enough to realize it was time to make some amends.

        Ten must’ve fallen asleep at some point, cause when he opens his eyes, he’s greeted with the dark of the night and a pair of brown eyes looking at him. He doesn’t dare to break the thinking bubble Johnny was into, so he stays quiet.

        “I missed you” Johnny whispers. “I missed you a lot.”

        Ten smiles.

        “I didn’t want you to come ‘cause I was vulnerable, and frustrated, even more than my mom. I didn’t want you to see that.” Ten lays a hand over Johnny’s cheek and the older covers it with his own. “I didn’t think this would’ve turned out like this.. If I would’ve known-”

        “There was no way to know”

        “If I would’ve known,” Johnny continues, ignoring Ten’s comment “I would’ve let you come, meet my father. He would’ve like that.”

        “He already did” Ten answers.

        “But not through skype, really meet you. Hear your voice, see your smile, feel what it's like to be looked by you.”

        Ten giggles. “I don’t think he would’ve cared about any of those things”

        “I guess..” Johnny answers, caressing Ten’s arm. “Sorry”

        “It’s fine.”

        “Mom knitted you a sweater” Johnny confesses, chuckling.

        “She did? But we’re in August.”

        “I couldn’t say no” Johnny laughs, and Ten does too.

        Ten doesn’t know when does Johnny’s hand ended up on his cheek, but by the moment he notices it, the older is shorting their distance, placing his lips over Ten’s.

        It has been a while since they’ve kissed, and Ten doesn’t realize how much he missed those lips until now. Until Johnny is slowly tasting them, trying to keep this -whatever that was- intimate, as if he must’ve contemplated a lot how to approach Ten. As if he was fearing Ten would’ve rejected him. Which is not the case.

        Ten naturally places his hand on the back of Johnny’s neck, deepening the kiss some more, slightly biting his lower lip and making Johnny moan in response. Ten caresses Johnny’s tongue with his own and what was supposed to be a slow kissed turned into a rushed one. He understands now that when Johnny said that he missed him, he meant this too. He doesn’t blame him.

        Hands go to Ten’s hair and he expects the older to position himself on top of him, like Johnny normally does. But as soon as Johnny’s hands went to his hair, they moved down to his back, and ended up on his hip, pushing Ten against his own body and forcing him to sit up on top of him.

        The room starts to smell like sex when Ten rubs his crotch against Johnny’s, and the moans begin to grow, along with the sounds of their rushed breaths and their lips crashing together.

        It’s ironic how the mind can play with you.

        Taeyong’s face appears on his mind. It’s only for half a second, but it’s enough for Ten to part away from Johnny’s mouth.

        “What?” Johnny asks, slightly opening his eyes and looking for Ten’s lips.

        “No-nothing” Johnny is ready to protest, but Ten is already over him again, shutting up whatever that he was going to say with a sloppy kiss.

        Ten wasn’t planning to tell Johnny about that night. He was planning to ignore it, forget it, pretend that it never happened, but if the guilt he’s feeling now as he takes off Johnny’s shirt is going to stick around, he might aswell reconsider the idea of telling him.

        Not today, though.

  
  
  
  
  


        “You should do it, tell him.”

        “Ugh, why did I even tell you.”

        Jaehyun laughs, though it’s short. “Because you need to tell someone, you can’t keep it to yourself for long hyung.”

        Ten laughs now, bitterly, counting the amount of things he’s keeping from him and right now living with. But this is not a time to go over those. “Good point” he lies.

        “It’s gonna hurt Johnny hyung” Jaehyun says, as if it wasn’t obvious enough. “But it’s better if you tell him. It was just a kiss, and it’s not like you started it”

        “But I didn’t stop it”

        Jaehyun groans, “So what? Yeah, it was wrong, but it was still a one time thing, an accident, and you don’t wanna do it again, do you?”

        “No”

        “Then be less harsh on yourself”

        “Why are you on my side though? I thought you particularly hated cheaters” and Jaehyun did, having been cheated once. The younger sighs, wrapping his fingers around the warm of his coffee.

        “I do, what you did was fucked up and plain stupid,” _geez thanks_ , Ten whispers “but you’re my hyung, and we all deserve second chances. This is not like you.”

        Both of them go quiet, but Ten lingers a little with Jaehyun’s last comment.

        “What am I like?” Ten asks, looking for the younger’s eyes.

        Jaehyun thinks about it for a bit, scratching the back of his neck and says “you’re imperfect… I think you know that pretty well, and try to change it every day.”

        “Well-”

        “You are the person I’d be looking for if I was sad though, or if I wanted to drop any work. You can cheer me up pretty easily. You can identify right from wrong, and I feel I can rely on you, even if you tend to rely on me more, or on Johnny hyung.” Jaehyun laughs. Ten is speechless. He doesn’t know what was he expecting, but he wasn’t expecting this. “Which is why I think you deserve a second chance. You’re not the type to cheat, you’re loyal."

        Ten thinks about Jaehyun’s comment on his way back home. About how he has stuck to Johnny all this time, or at least tried to. He’s a good person, but not all good persons are in the right place, he wonders if that’s the case for him.

  
  


        It’s been a few weeks since Johnny came back from Chicago and their days have been going by quite… odd. As if someone took out a piece of their complete puzzle (or they just realized that there was one missing all this time), they didn’t know how to act with each other sometimes.

        They still laughed, they still cooked together, cuddle at night and hang out whenever Johnny had the time. But Johnny’s work just got worse by the moment he came back. He had less time to be with Ten and sometimes his only sweet moments with the younger were during dinner, as he had to go back and take care of some matter.

        Ten said nothing during this. Being besides Johnny should be enough, even if that meant to see him an hour a day. And he knew the older would snap out if Ten ever complained, he knew that he was walking through thin glass, that Johnny was getting tired of Ten looking at him like a lost puppy, but he couldn’t do anything else.

        Being guilty about leaving him that night still haunted Ten on the nights, and it made him try to be a better boyfriend, a more comprehensive, caring, loving boyfriend; which wasn’t actually a good idea. It irritated Johnny, even though he ends up apologizing a minute later and blaming it on work.

        But Ten didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to believe the frowns Johnny made were towards him.

        He planned to surprise him, bring him a bottle of tequila and let the older vent his frustration on the rooftop, where he knew Johnny liked to spend some time on. But for his surprise, when he reached Johnny’s company, there wasn’t an angry Johnny neither the irritated Johnny he has been greeting a lot these past days.

        Johnny was closing the entrance door of his building with a smile on his face, trying to shove Hansol off of him with a kick. He missed and Hansol mocked him, pointing at him and trying to run when Johnny finally turned around. Ten stood behind a building, eyeing the olders play around as they walked off.

        He didn’t want to feel jealous, he didn’t want to be angry or blame it on Johnny. No. It’s Hansol for chrissake- Hansol, the person with who both of them have hanged out a lot, Hansol, the person who has been knowing Johnny more than Ten. His heart wasn’t hearing nor following Ten’s commands, he still felt angry on the inside, clenching a hand. He was starting to believe Johnny was getting tired of him.

 _You don’t get to feel like this_ , he thinks, covering his face with his hands, _not when you’ve done nothing but fuck things up._

        But he’s already following them closely, not planning to turn around at all.

        Hansol points at a restaurant, and even though Johnny rejects the idea to go inside, Hansol still pushes him towards the entrance, walking inside and letting Ten release a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

        “Now I’m a fucking stalker” Ten mutters, fixing his jacket, “great”

        He peeps through the window and sees Johnny smiling, sitting down on a chair Hansol pushed him to. Ten stays for a few minutes, admiring his boyfriend being happy with someone else, drinking with someone else, laughing to someone else’s jokes, and he wants to believe that this means nothing ‘cause he knows this means nothing, but it’s not getting through him.

        He doesn’t stay for long after seeing Hansol pass an arm behind Johnny’s shoulders. He doesn’t see Johnny shoving him away, yet again.

        Johnny had a good time, really, refreshing a bit with Hansol being drunk and talking his ass off, something Johnny doesn’t get to see a lot. Hansol complains about the trainees (and about his boss that won’t give him a raise on his paycheck), but this only makes the two men laugh (and Johnny to grab Hansol by the neck with a tiny tiny bit of force with his teeth clenched). It’s a great time, and he wonders when was the last time he had this type of happiness of hanging out with a friend?

        He’s been feeling suffocated back home, everything reminding him of his dad, or the fact that he wasn’t necessarily okay with Ten. Ten’s digging-holes like stares when he thought Johnny wasn’t noticing weren’t a help either. He wanted fresh air, get out of that toxic and depressing atmosphere for once, and from the working atmosphere too, so when Hansol proposed to go out and drink, he only hesitates a bit before saying yes.

        Even if Ten wasn’t a big help and probably a reason of his frustration, that didn’t mean that Johnny wouldn’t have liked him to be there with him and Hansol.

        By the moment Johnny comes back home, he believes- no, he wants to believe the younger has fallen asleep, but, obviously, it’s not the case. He didn’t let Ten know about his spontaneous drinking night with Hansol and maybe had rejected a few calls from him.

        Ten is sitting on the couch when Johnny steps into the living room, and he turns on the light, looking at him with a serious expression. Johnny is about to ask him if he’s been watching American movies lately, ‘cause that’s a typical scene (he’s maybe a little tipsy), but Ten cuts him off before he could open his mouth.

        “Where were you?” Ten asks, even though he already knows the answer.

        “With Hansol.” Johnny answers. “We were drinking”

        “Huh, at least you’re not lying” Ten laughs bitterly. “What’s the occasion?”

        “Hansol’s Birthday” Johnny blurts out, and regrets it immediately. He didn’t want to say that he wanted a break from everyone (including Ten), and saying that was his first option. A bad one, as Ten knows Hansol’s birthday.

        “Really?” Ten asks with a fake surprise, “Then he changed his birthday from November to the middle of fucking August? Or did he born twice?”

        Johnny groans. “Sorry, no, it wasn’t his birthday, but we were just drinking”

        “Why?” Ten asks, again, clenching his hand.

        Johnny sighs, sitting down on a chair. “Remember what we talked about when you called me the day I flew to Chicago?”

        “What does that have to do with any-”

        “I said that I was tired, of everything.” Johnny looks down at his hands, “I still am. I needed this break” 

        “Break from what?” Ten asks, “from what Johnny? From me?”

        “Ugh, you know I didn’t mean th-”

        “Just answer”

        Johnny looks up at Ten, and sees him sitting on the border of the couch, trying to get near Johnny but still not getting up. His tone is harsh, trying to hide the nervousness off.

        “I can’t believe you” Ten laughs, bitterly. “I’ve been trying to be supportive here, cause-”

        Johnny interrupts him, firing up “Cause what? My dad’s death? I don’t need it, I don’t need you to look at me like I’m miserable, that’s what I’m trying not to do and you’re not helping!”

        “It’s not that” Ten groans, getting up and sitting instead on top of the table.

        “Then what?!” Johnny screams, still heated up.

        Ten didn’t want to say his dirty little secret, but he’ll have to do it at some point. He’ll have to tell Johnny, get off with the guilt that building up inside him every second that passes by. There’s no good moment to tell him, so might as well do it now.

        He’s about to, but looking at Johnny, breathing heavily with his hair ruffled, he chickens out.

        “What?!” Johnny repeats after a few seconds of silence.

        “Do you remember that the night you flew to Chicago… I walked off on you?” Ten whispers. Johnny is about to rant again, but he decides to just nod. How could he forget about that? He’s been wondering what did Ten do that night for a long time. “I’d normally go to my studio, but that night I didn’t.”

        “What did you do?” Johnny asks, a part of him knowing where this was going while the other still didn’t want to believe it.

        “A guy kissed me” Ten spits, not daring to look back at Johnny and looking instead at the floor. The older is quiet for some moments, and Ten wonders if he’s trying to contain himself from killing him.

        Johnny sits on the couch, where Ten was previously sitting. “And? Did you enjoy it?”

        Ten is about to say no, that he didn’t, that he would’ve liked for Johnny to be kissing him instead, and even though it’s true, he wasn’t going to hide the ugly part. “Yeah.”

        Johnny groans, closing his eyes and trying to push back the tears. It kind of works.

        “I’m sorry”

        “Have you seen him again?” Johnny ignores Ten’s apology. “Did you fuck?”

        “What?” Ten looks up, “no, of course not”

        Johnny laughs. “You’re saying ‘of course’ as if it was something obvious, that I shouldn’t have asked in the first time, yet you still cheated.” his words are sour on Ten’s ears, and he wants to defend himself, but nothing good comes up on his mind.

        It takes Ten a few minutes, but he takes courage and sits besides Johnny, whispering ‘I’m sorry’s and ‘I didn’t meant to’ almost as if he wasn’t saying them. He knows Johnny is hearing them, judging by the frown on his face. It’s not until Ten tries to touch the older's hand that Johnny jerks off and gets up, looking down at Ten with disgust.

        Ten was fearing that. Fearing for that look.

        That look was the one that was haunting him at night, making him wake up sometimes, to find Johnny rolled over to his side of the bed. He’d normally shrug off the bad taste that nightmare leaves him, and lay down again, closing his arms around Johnny’s torso and hoping to have a better dream this time.

        There was no way this could have a different outcome, a better one. He knew by the looking at Johnny. There are some tears going down his eyes, just like Ten, but Johnny’s are probably because of the anger.

        “I’m sleeping out tonight” Johnny mutters, moving from his spot in the moment. Ten tries to grab his arm but Johnny shakes him off, making Ten fall on the ground. Johnny is about to help him, but the look on Ten’s eyes make him not to. He’d like to think this is all a bad joke, but the sadness and guilt on Ten’s puppy eyes are too real to be it.

        “Joh-”

        “I’m going to Hansol’s, and don’t worry, I’m not gonna do what you did”

        Johnny is disgusted, angry and still too drunk to do something rational at this point, but he’s sure he would never do something like Ten did. He still doesn’t believe how Ten could. He walks off the room and closes the door before Ten could even get up.

        Ten crawls for a moment, trying to get up until the door closes and the sound of it echoes on his ears for a bit, making him cry right on the ground.

        At some point he starts laughing, getting the irony that this is how Johnny must feel most of the times when Ten walks off. The unpleasant feeling of being left alone. He promises to himself that he won’t walk out of Johnny again, even though he’s not sure he’ll have a second chance with him at this point.

        His laughing turns into crying again.

  
  
  
  


        Johnny doesn’t come home the next day, not until it’s too late and Ten is asleep.

        Ten had phoned his company that afternoon, too scared to be rejected if he called Johnny’s cellphone and too preoccupied to not call at all. His secretary happily answers the phone, telling him that Johnny indeed went to the company that morning.

        “Oh, here’s Hansol, I’ll pass him to you” she announces with a giggle and Ten is too slow to stop her.

        “Hello?” Hansol answers, probably he doesn’t know who is he talking to.

        “Hey” Ten says, banging his head against the mirror in his dance studio.

        “Ah, Ten..” Hansol’s voice drops two tones down. “Do you want me call Johnny?”

        “No, no, no!” Ten answers immediately. “No, he must be…” there’s a lot of words he can say, but none of those are the one he’s supposed to say.

        “Busy” Hansol finishes for him. 

        “Yeah,” Ten breaths, “of course, busy”

        “He’s sad.” Hansol confesses. Ten doesn’t know what to say. “He’s trying to not show it, but he’s sad.”

        “Yeah..” He still doesn’t know what to say, rather than ‘I’ve been there, trying to hide a feeling’ but it doesn’t feel like it’d be okay.

        “Just give him some time” Hansol continues, and Ten doesn’t understand. Ten is the one that did wrong, the one that is making Johnny feel sad, so why is he trying to console him, just like Jaehyun?

        “Of course” he answers, though.

        “I know everything will turn out well”

        Ten keeps going back to that sentence while he’s dancing, and while he’s eating dinner and while he went to bed.

        How can Hansol know? Ten didn’t. He didn’t know anything. Only that he fucked up, that Johnny won’t want to talk to him for the next days and probably will break up with him eventually. Jaehyun’s ‘it was just a kiss’ echoes on his mind, and he wonders how can Jaehyun be so sure too. That Ten will tell Johnny and everything will be fine, that Johnny will give him a second chance, one that Jaehyun thinks Ten deserves.

        But does he? He doesn’t remember anything good he’s done for Johnny. Johnny’s frowns is all that lingers on his memory. And now his disgusted look he gave him the night before.

        For once, he should do something for Johnny. Something merely for Johnny’s happiness, and Ten comes up with something, but drifts off with the idea on his mind.

        Johnny walks in when Ten falls asleep, and he’s relief. Ten would’ve liked to talk about things now, doesn’t matter the time, and Johnny felt too tired for that. He dropped his dirty clothes on the bathroom and changed into clean clothes, taking off Hansol’s clothes.

        He takes his pillow and is about to walk off the room to sleep on the couch, when Ten raises up, looking around as if Johnny would’ve done a lot of noise.

        “Johnny?” His raspy sleeping voice says, and Johnny sighs.

        “Yeah, go back to sleep.”

        He tries to make him go back to sleep, but Ten is already sitting on the mattress, rubbing his eyes and looking for his slippers with his feet.

        “We need to talk” Ten yawns.

        “Why now?” Johnny whispers.

        “It has to be now”

        Ten walks past him and goes inside the kitchen, making some coffee. Johnny carries his pillow with him, leaving it on the counter and resting his head on it until a cup touches his hand. Ten is sitting on the other side of the island, nervously eyeing the older, but mostly leaving his eyes on his own cup of coffee.

        “What are we going to do?” Ten asks after a minute of silence with blowing noises towards their hot coffees.

        “Why are you asking? You’re the one that is not letting me to sleep” Johnny laughs, and Ten feels distant of that gloomy attitude Johnny has. Shouldn’t he be twice as serious? Johnny notices the lack of response from the younger, and erases his smile right away. After some long sighing, he talks again. “That night… did you want to do more with that… man?”

        The words go out painfully enough, and Johnny hopes Ten heard right and doesn’t make him repeat it.

        “No.” he says, sure of his answer. “I didn’t.”

        Johnny looks up at him, and Ten feels flustered.

        “Okay” Johnny sighs, “I forgive you”

        “What?” Ten doesn’t believe what he’s hearing.

        “It’ll take me time to ignore that it happened, well no- to forget it. But I’m sure we can overcome this, with time.” Johnny side smiles, and Ten isn’t buying it.

        He knows Johnny is sincere, but this isn’t how things are supposed to be. Johnny should be mad, he should still treat Ten like the scumbag he is, not smile at him nor make jokes and much less forgive him.

        “What do you think?” Johnny says, resting his chin on the pillow and looking at Ten, cutely.

        It takes Ten a few seconds, and while looking everywhere but Johnny, he says, “I think we should break up”

        “What?” Johnny’s smile vanishes in a second.

        “You deserve better than me” Ten says, laughing bitterly, “this is too much, and I don’t deserve any of this”

        “But- tha-that doesn’t mean we should break up” Johnny gets up, kind of offended.

        “It does,” Ten answers, “it really does, because I-I can’t bear to be with you”

        “What?”

        “I feel like I’m this huge weight for you every time I do something wrong, for everyone really, but this time I really fucked up, and you’re too good to be with me” Ten looks down, at his coffee, hoping to end with this already.

        It feels wrong, but Ten doesn’t feel like living like this any more, like if he’s just a problem around the older. He wants to smile again, feel content with his life and carry his own problems with him.

        “I’m not too good to be with y- Ten, look at me” Johnny passes his hand through the table and places it on top of Ten, trying to catch the younger’s attention, and when he does, Ten looks up with red eyes. “You don’t want to break up”

        “I do” no, he doesn’t, but he doesn’t see a happy ending after this. “ You once said it, you're tired of me and I don’t want to be a bother any-”

        “You’re not a bother!”

        “Yes I am!” Ten walks back, leaving Johnny’s hand. “I am, you know I am but you’re too kind to tell me, everyone is too kind to tell me.”

        Ten is about to go back to the room, but Johnny stops him before he even leaves the room, wrapping his arm around him.

        “You’re not, you have never been Ten, so don’t do this.”

        Ten wants to believe his words, wants to think that he can work on this. But he has worked on this for too long, and things end up the same at the end. Ten tries to break off the hug, but Johnny takes his neck instead and crashes his lips, moving Ten back until they hit the wall.

        He’s saying things between the kisses, sobbing them probably, as Ten feels tears on his cheeks and he knows those aren’t his. The kiss is rushed, desperate, as if Johnny is trying to tell him something through that. Ten knows what he means, but he’s so stubborn himself, so he plays dumb and melts under the kiss, under Johnny’s hands caressing the back of his head, as this could probably be his last time.

        The crying stops when things get heat up, and Johnny passes his tongue to Ten’s mouth, totally forgetting that Ten had kissed another mouth. He knows Ten belongs to him, he knows Ten wants him as much as he does, as Ten places a hand on his cheek and another goes down between his legs, touching Johnny’s bulge.

        This feels right in every way, and Johnny is confused. Why can’t Ten see it? That this is salvable, that Ten doesn’t have to leave and he means and is more than he thinks he is.

        He tries to convince the younger that night, making love to him slowly against the wall, mixing his breath with his and whispering ‘don’t go’s with every thrust.

        By the time they return to the bed, Ten is drifting again on his sleep, and he finally goes with Johnny’s lullaby of ‘I love you’s along with kisses on his shoulders, collarbone, neck, and every part that Johnny feels like kissing.

        He goes to sleep too, with Ten’s warm back against his chest and their hands tangled under the sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, comments are highly appreciated. I really want to know what you guys think, what you think might happen, what you want to happen, or if you have any questions, so I can add anything to this fic on the remaining two chapters to improve it.  
> thanks in advance!


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